Opinion: Safety and diversity are necessities on campus

All college campuses need to be safe spaces for students regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation.

Protests demanding racial equality on college campuses have erupted across the country in recent weeks.

They have spread from Yale to the University of Missouri to Claremont McKenna College, right down the street.

Different schools across the country are all dealing with the same exact problem: racism.

Claremont McKenna dean of students, Mary Spellman resigned on Nov. 12 in response to protests over an email she sent to a Latina student saying she would work to help those who “don’t fit [their] CMC mold.”

For months, Claremont McKenna students have been fighting for more diversity on their campus.

The undergraduate student body is 43 percent white, 12 percent Latino, 10 percent Asian American, 8 percent mixed race and 4 percent black, with the rest being international students and others, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times also stated that the students have complained about vandalism at their Queer Resource Center, Black Lives Matter posters being destroyed, racial slurs and constant mockery of their cultures.

However, college officials have done nothing to stop this discrimination.

Students should not have to fight to be equally represented at their schools or demand protection from their administrators.

There should not be a “mold” they have to fit into in order to be accepted in a school.

Colleges need to embrace diversity since most of the student population tends to be people of color.

If your school is tending more to the needs of white people rather than the student body as a whole, there is a huge problem especially since people of color are already less represented.

Backlash has followed the dean’s resignation because she is said to have had a good reputation.

However, because of the racial tensions already rising on around the campus, her remark to a Latina student was the tipping point for students.

College is supposed to be the place where you do not have to worry about discrimination, where people are supposed to be more accepting.

No one wants to go to a college where they do not feel safe being themselves.

Students should not accept  unaccepting college.

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