Harvard officials were forced to apologize to university members this week after issuing color-coded placemats on campus providing students with scripted answers for complex social issues.

Students took issue with the campaign, stating that one of the world’s leading academic institutions should not be telling them “what to think and what to say”.

The “holiday placemats for social justice” advised students on how to talk to their families over the holidays about Syrian refugees, police killings, student activism and the controversy over the “house master” title which the University recently stopped using.

The placemats were issued by the Harvard Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, together with the freshmen dean’s office, and were divided into four sections with potential questions and how to answer them.

Here is the Harvard Holiday Placemat. For those who have a heart, but maybe no brain... pic.twitter.com/j6xjSWVPB6 — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 17, 2015

One section dealt with student activism and the recent trend of students challenging campus racism. “Why are black students complaining? Shouldn’t they be happy to be in college?”, one question asked. The suggested response stated that the students were not complaining and that “if non-black students get the privilege of that safe environment, I believe that same privilege should be given to all students”.

A second section addressed the ongoing controversy over allowing Syrian refugees into the US, which family members could argue, Harvard suggested, was unsafe because the refugees might have ties to terrorists. The response provided said that “the US has been accepting refugees from the war-torn areas around the world for decades”. It specifically referenced the wars in Central America and said that despite accepting refugees then, they had “very strict vetting and not one incident of violence”. The section also misspelled Islamophobia.

The outgoing title of “house master” was addressed in the next section. The mat explained that the University had stopped using the phrase because the term master “is reminiscent of slave masters and the legacy of slavery”.

In the final section, the mats dealt with questions about the police killings of African Americans, and asked: “Why didn’t they just listen to the officer? If they had just obeyed the law this wouldn’t have happened”.

The response provided led in with a question: “Do you think the response would be the same if it was a white person being pulled over?” It said that the victims were “not breaking the law and are unarmed”. It then referenced Tamir Rice, the 12-year old boy who was shot to death in November 2014 by police officers two seconds after they arrived on the scene.

The Harvard Undergraduate Council sharply criticized the mats, in a statement on Wednesday, in which the council wrote “to express concern”. The students acknowledged that while some of them agreed “wholeheartedly” with the points made and others didn’t, they all believed that the University “should engage in the task of helping students to think and speak for themselves, not telling them what to think and what to say”.

“We reject the premise that there is a ‘right’ way to answer the questions posed. We do not think the offices of the university should be in the business of disseminating ‘approved’ positions on complex and divisive political issues,” the council wrote. “Prescribing party-line talking points stands in stark contrast to the college’s mission of fostering intellectual, social, and personal growth.”

The dean of student life and the dean of freshmen released a joint statement apologizing for the placemats and acknowledged that they “failed to account for the many viewpoints” on the Harvard campus.

“Our goal was to provide a framework for you to engage in conversations with peers and family members as you return home for the winter break,” they wrote. “However, it was not effectively presented and it ultimately caused confusion in our community. On behalf of the office of student life and the freshman dean’s office, we offer our sincere apologies for this situation.”