SAINT PETER— Following a record-breaking 8-day streak without a bias incident occurring on campus, the Dean of Students office has added a sign outside their office reading “This college has gone ___ days without a bias incident.” The dry-erasable day count will be updated each morning.

The addition to the campus center comes in the midst of heavy discussion on the prevalence of bias incidents on campus. A bias incident is defined by the college as an “expression of hostility… based on the victim’s actual or perceived identity.” The current administration has taken unprecedented steps towards investigating bias incidents on campus by having extensive conversations with all parties unlikely to commit bias incidents or hate crimes.

The bias incident count sign is hung in a high-traffic area just outside the college cafeteria.

Despite the frequency of bias incidents on campus, many students, faculty, and administrators take solace in the fact that Gustavus averages far fewer incidents of overt hatred than most colleges and residential communities. One such student, sophomore Sean Joseph, explained he is “proud to be a part of a community that is not quite as viciously racist as the rest of the country.” Joseph fails to see the value in “fixing a problem that other communities have worse than we do.”

The sign does not take into account an independent analyst contracted to estimate how many bias incidents go unreported and undocumented on campus. Thankfully, the results of this study are too depressing to be taken seriously.