In an effort to be as transparent as possible with our student body, we issued a Demographic Survey, which eventually led to make up our first official Student Union Diversity Report.

I want to apologize on behalf of the Diversity Affairs Council for the time it has taken us to formally address the student body since the public release of the Jason Stockley verdict. I want the student body to know that the Diversity Affairs Council is here as a resource for you.

In the first iteration of what it plans to make a yearly report, the Diversity Affairs Council surveyed students involved with all branches of Student Union—including Senate, Treasury, Social Programming Board and the Council itself—to assess the diversity of the student government organization.

We ask the University community to recognize that Michael Brown’s death was not an isolated incident, but the result of a broken system.

When campus climate survey results were announced at a forum on Monday, many students were neither surprised by the results nor impressed with Washington University’s response to them.

The first gender-inclusive housing option at Washington University was made available in 2008 on the North Side; six years later, the only gender-inclusive housing options remain limited to the North Side and to off-campus housing. In simplest terms, it has taken the University far too long to expand its gender-inclusive housing options.

The Diversity Affairs Council, a branch of Student Union, recognizes that the image posted online on Oct. 30, regardless of the intention, has hurt members of our community. As representatives of the Washington University in St. Louis student body, we are disheartened by this incident.

One by one, Muslim students and their peers passed the microphone to discuss past experiences with racism and Islamophobia. For many of them, these memories resurfaced when a Halloween photo of students costumed in military garb in what some argued was a depiction of Osama bin Laden, others as a stereotypical Muslim at gunpoint, surfaced on Facebook last Wednesday.

Washington University administrators scheduled an emergency meeting for 8 a.m. Thursday morning to discuss a Facebook post that has led some to vocalize concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment on the Danforth Campus.

The Diversity Affairs Council (DAC) recognizes the events of Tuesday night because we are students and representatives of the Washington University in St. Louis community. Our purpose is to foster a more inclusive campus environment and provide a connection between the student body and administration.