Outraged students gathered at the 1968 Olympic statue on the campus of San Jose State University to protest alleged activities that no one would be thankful for.

The students were protesting allegations of what we consider intolerable racist activities of four white students against a then 17 year-old black student in the dorms on campus at SJSU.

Some of the alleged activities reported by the San Jose Mercury News included locking the student in bike chains then claiming to have lost the key, barricading him into his room, displaying Nazi or Confederate paraphernalia and writing racial slurs in the common areas of the attached dorm rooms.They also made slurs and derogatory references to the student revolving around his race.

“I feel like the resident advisers should have been more aware of the situation because obviously they had no idea,” said Lexi Josefik, 18, biomedical engineering major at SJSU, “and he (the victim) was afraid to stand up for himself and no one knew.”

Josefik resides in the Campus Village C dorms at SJSU. She lives on the sixth floor, the floor below where the victim and his roommates lived.

“Knowing that it happened right above me makes me sick because there’s nothing that I could do about it because I didn’t know,” Josefik said. “If I did know I would have done something about it.”

These allegations are shocking, but it is hard to believe that this type of hate could exist, much less go on for months unreported and ignored by any of the seven students that shared that common area.

Hate like this has no place anywhere, much less a college campus housing situation like this young student found himself in.

There may be many controversies about hate crime legislation with lots of bickering in the halls of state, local and federal legislative bodies across our country. Thankfully these laws are on the books, and this is clearly a case that falls under those laws.

If we as a country are going to use the law as a means to attempt to change the level of hate in this country, then it is important that those laws affect and punish not only the perpetrators, but also people who turn a blind eye towards the hate, which allows it to propagate.

In this case, there were seven people occupying the same common areas where these activities occurred.

Where were the two people who were not the victim or perpetrators? Why did they not bring this matter to the attention of the RA, campus police or the administration?

Intimidation is not a valid excuse and many of these resources can be accessed anonymously. The only thing we are left with is either tacit agreement with the actions or a “not my problem” mentality, both of which are unimaginable in these circumstances.

Perhaps we should amend hate crime legislation to also apply pressure to people in our society who are in a position to report or do something about hate crimes, but choose to not do so.

Allowing this wiggle room to not care about our fellow man ensures the flame of hate in America and our world is an eternal flame that may forever go unextinguished.