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D'Marquis Allen, a Southern Methodist University senior, spotted the party invitation on Facebook at 3:47 a.m. on a Tuesday in October. Two predominantly white fraternities planned to throw "the nearly barbarous banger in SMU history."

The post pictured a black rapper biting a golden chain. His sunglasses reflected a fistful of cash and a woman'south scantily clad backside. "Bring out your bling, jerseys, and inner thug," the invitation read.

Allen, who is president of SMU's black student association, took a screen shot and sent it to a couple of friends. "Thoughts?" he asked, before going to sleep.

By the time Allen woke up, word of the off-campus political party had exploded on social media. Some people condemned it. Others wondered why the fuss. Before week's end, SMU President R. Gerald Turner chosen it "racially offensive." The fraternities canceled the political party and apologized through national representatives.

A pupil movement called "Blackness at SMU" took off, with the goal of fighting racism on campus. The students rallied, marched and prayed. They gave Turner a list of demands.

Allen and other blackness SMU students say the problem goes across a single sick-advised political party theme.

"The parties, they're going to happen. We become that," said Allen, who majors in creative computing. "Our focus at present is, well, why do these continue happening? What can nosotros do to stop them? What is the academy going to do to stop them?"

SMU joins higher campuses beyond the nation where protests are forcing people to examine racial sensitivities and what they view every bit halting progress toward equitable handling. At more than 70 colleges, students have drafted demands, such as greater diversity among students and faculty and more than financial aid to encounter those goals. Some want campus leaders to merely admit that racism is a problem.

The students say immature people of all races should experience and appreciate multifariousness in college to be set up for the world afterward graduation.

"A lot of students come up from high schools that are nearly all Hispanic, nearly all African-American, well-nigh all white," Turner, SMU's president, said in a recent interview. "As I try to tell them each year when they come in here, they're at a disadvantage. … Whether they're Hispanic, African-American or white, they all need to learn because it's a more diverse world and that's how it's going to be."

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Holly K. Hacker in an education reporter and information specialist at The Dallas Morning News.