I am not a big fan of copying and pasting other posts, no matter how well intentioned they may be. Therefore, as one may expect, I did not copy and paste the post which said, “To the students of color at Mizzou, we, the students of color/student allies at [fill in the name of the school] stand with you in solidarity. To those who are threatening your sense of safety, we are watching. #ConcernedStudent1950 #InSolidarityWithMizzou.” This is for one reason: it does not call people to active action, but instead to the passive copying and pasting of other people’s statuses, and to the passive activity of “watching.” Instead, the call should be for action. Much action is necessary, but I will only focus on two modes of action in this editorial for the sake of space in the newspaper.

One action is to listen to the experiences of people around you. For me, a middle class white male who has never been racially discriminated against, this is an important activity. Without doing this, I would not know about the prejudice which some students (anonymously) show on YikYak or the prejudice that some students show in-person when yelling the n-word to African Americans. Without listening to the experiences of others, I would not know about the demeaning way in which some people view the skin color of many Asian Americans on campus. Some people may continue to act with bigotry regardless of the experiences they hear about, but at least hearing other people’s experiences can make someone (hopefully) better-informed than before.

If you are well-versed on racial issues, educate the people around you. There is a lot of ignorance from college administrators down to students. If you doubt that administrators are capable of being THAT ignorant of the issues going on around them, events at the University of Missouri and the University of Louisville (where its president apparently dressed in a sombrero, of all things) show otherwise. Even at a place like Dickinson, I’m not sure if administrators here would truly know how to maturely deal with the type of racial unrest at other campuses across the nation in recent days. And that’s before I even get to the ignorance of students around here and around other college campuses across the nation, some of which has been demonstrated on sites like YikYak. The actual “educating” of students and administrators alike will be more effective than simply “watching,” which is what the copy-and-paste status calls for.

Now don’t get me wrong—the copying and pasting of this status, while flawed, has better intentions than many copy-and-paste statuses. Many copy-and-paste statuses often promote lies or scams of some sort, such as all the statuses about Facebook’s ability to use your post information, pictures, etc. But it is certainly not the call-to-action that I think #ConcernedStudent1950 calls for. Now is a time for action instead of copy-and-paste statuses. Let’s educate ourselves and/or educate others on racial issues.