Michigan State University has banned students from hanging whiteboards on their dorm room doors out of bullying concerns.
According to The Detroit News, there have been several incidents in which people have left negative messages on other students' boards. School officials hope the ban will cut down on the practice.
Whiteboards will continue to be allowed inside dorm rooms.
"In any given month, there are several incidents like this. There was no one incident that was the straw that broke the camel's back," Kat Cooper, director of University Residential Services Communications, told the Detroit News. "Sometimes these things are racial, sometimes they're sexual in nature. There are all sorts of things that happen."
School officials cannot enact the ban until this summer when the student handbook is updated.
"These are mostly activities of opportunity," Cooper said. "[Students] are walking down the hall and there's a ready writing surface and a pen right there waiting for them. These are not things, generally, where people are targeting people."
According to MLive, the NAACP recently wrote on Facebook that someone left a racial slur on an African-American student's whiteboard at Michigan State.
Cooper told WLNS-TV whiteboards, which students have historically used to communicate, are growing obsolete because of social media.
"Whiteboards have been decreasing in popularity since the rise of social media and texting and cell phones and all of those things," she said.
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