In early February, a racially charged party mocking the black minority population at the University of California San Diego spurred much concern and called into question the safety of minorities in the University of California school system.

During Black History Month, an off-campus event called the “Compton Cookout” was put together by the members of UCSD fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha, who urged participants to wear chains and old clothing to mock historical black slaves.

In addition to the racially discriminatory party, six swastikas were discovered on campus during the previous two months, which prompted lawmakers and UC President Mark Yudof to take action. During a meeting in San Francisco on Wednesday April 7, the University of California board of regents spent two hours discussing recent racial activities on the nine UC campuses. According to Yudof, over the past 5 years, 115 episodes of vandalism involving hate speech have occurred on the UC’s 10 campuses. Incidents have occurred on other UC campuses, such as Irvine, Santa Cruz and Davis. Just last week, swastikas were found drawn in the hallways of the Clark Kerr Campus Residential Halls at UC Berkely, according to Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basari. Other racist activities included use of a racial epithet on a student television show shown on the UCSD campus, swastikas spray-painted across the UC Davis campus and an anti-gay slogan spray-painted on the UC Davis lesbian center.

Yudof suggests that the Compton Cookout emphasizes how much the African American enrollment needs to increase at UCSD since there are so few members of the minority group attending the school now. Yudof proposed increasing the admission rate for African Americans in order to decrease the minority group’s vulnerability to racial accusations and activities in UCSD. But those who are admitted or hired may not come to those UCs like UCSD, which have become known as hostile anti-minority climates. “If you admit more black students, they are still not going to come to UCSD, knowing that the climate is going to be hostile towards them,” UCSD Black Student Union Fnann Keflezighi co-chair said in a March 24 article in The Daily Californian.

Though UCSD’s Principle of Community states that they reject acts of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion and political beliefs, the principle described the consequences of such acts vaguely as “we will confront and appropriately respond to such acts.” Yudof and the UC administration have yet to implement specific ways to prevent these hate crimes. What the administration does not realize is that instead of discussing, they need to take action by spelling out explicit consequences for racist behaviors to quash the growing number of racial incidents.

Students should experience diversity at universities as they learn about different cultures and ideas, and meet new people. Future racial incidents, such as the ones that occurred at several of the UC campuses, should be prevented as much as possible because these discriminatory acts are not representative of America’s values of toleration, respect, equality and diversity.