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Do you feel safe on campus? Share your story

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Is your campus a safe place?

That may be a hard question to answer, especially if you’re a minority. Your life may not be in danger, but there may be signs that your well-being is not as important as that of others.

Maybe it’s a professor asking you if you speak English – even though you were born and raised here. Or logging on to Facebook only to see pictures of fellow students dressed up like insensitive parodies of your culture. Or being told that you only got into school because of Affirmative Action.

Or hearing a woman on a different campus being blamed for her own sexual assault.

Some people call these incidents microaggressions, slights that may not be intentional, but can make you feel unwelcome or even unsafe. These are the thousand tiny paper cuts that, over time, can feel like a much deeper wound.

Other people say that anyone experiencing these slights needs to just toughen up, and that by talking about campus trigger warnings or microaggressions, we are raising a generation of “delicate little flowers.”

But everyone’s experience is different.

In a conversation with the L.A. Times, Jonathan Butler, the hunger striker who helped bring national attention to Mizzou, said that reporters should have focused more on the hostile campus climate.

So, we’d like to have a conversation about your campus climate. What has your experience been? We want to hear your story.

You can share your story in the comments section below, or, if you’d like to be anonymous, send us a message via this form.

By submitting your story to us, you are representing and warranting that the content is original and accurate in all respects and does not defame any person, invade any rights of publicity or of privacy, plagiarize from anyone, or infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate any proprietary rights of any third party, including intellectual property rights (e.g., copyrights, trademarks). You agree that the Los Angeles Times may edit your submission and may publish your submission on any of its platforms, including without limitation on latimes.com, in print and on Los Angeles Times social media accounts, and may authorize third parties to publish your submission. You agree to abide by our terms of service.

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