Soon after that, the Undocumented Student Program began to receive anonymous email threats about students, and a fellow undocumented friend — a prominent member of the student government — was told by another student on Facebook: “Thanks for identifying yourself as an illegal … Now get out. I’ll look for you on campus.” All of this information was brought to the administration, but there was no follow-up.

Despite the supposed pride the administration takes in our accomplishments as undocumented students — often displaying our faces on posters around campus or on the school’s social media pages — the university remains silent when we are threatened. This September, after a group of Trump supporters came onto campus to build a mock wall and spew racially charged talk about “illegals,” the undocumented students were told to draft a statement of inclusion as a response, and that perhaps certain departments would send it through their email listservs as a gesture of support.

Administrators have said they are determined to earn our trust, but undocumented students on campus don’t want to be placated — we want our administrators to fully stand with us through actions and not just promises. After all, when posters with anti-Semitic language began to crop up around campus in late September, the associate chancellor took swift action by sending an email to all students condemning this language.

Some argue that hateful displays of racism or anti-Semitism are different from the actions of those on campus who yell, “Build a wall!” But too often, hate speech toward immigrants in this country is written off as political opinion, and school administrators don’t want to side with one political group or another. However, this political issue happens to be our futures, in the country where we grew up.

That’s why it was disheartening when Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California system — and, it should be noted, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security — wrote, in a Boston Globe op-ed essay, that students must be willing to listen to not just opposing views, but offensive ones, for the sake of free speech. She did not condone hate speech — “that which is designed to personally intimidate or harass” — but wrote that exceptions to free speech should be “narrowly construed.”