KALAMAZOO, MI -- The Kalamazoo College Board of Trustees and administrators on Saturday heard from about 100 students who expressed concerns about marginalization, racism and safety at the college and made a case for creation of an intercultural center on campus.

"I keep getting texts from my parents saying 'You can come home whenever you want,'" K-College senior Valerie Alagon said emotionally, as she spoke in an auditorium on the campus of the private, liberal arts college. "But this is my fight."

"I can't leave these students," she added, looking at the college's faculty, administration and Board of Trustees. "It's not just about physical safety, but being supported and listened to."

Nearly 100 K-College students marched through the Weimer Hicks Student Center auditorium Saturday morning to share their personal experiences with trustees and college administrators, including the president.

The rally came a few days after what K-College officials called a "racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and homophobic" entry was posted online on the Student Commission Google Doc.

The entry also included a direct threat: "At 900AM 3/5/15 I am going to start systematically executing faculty at Kalamazoo U, that will teach them the value of campus carry."

"These past two weeks, they've been heavy," K-College junior Rian Brown said to a crowd of students who rallied at Mandelle Hall on Saturday. "Students of color on this campus are scared, students of color have actually left."

Brown added: "The administration has yet to adequately act to ensure the safety of the campus or surrounding community. This is just one example of the ongoing lack of responsiveness to the concerns of students of color."

During the rally, the students marched into an open forum held for faculty, administration as well as students, selected at random, discussing campus diversity.

There they pleaded, shouted and cried out for the creation of an intercultural center to be built during the 2015-16 school year. The students also pushed for increased transparency from the college regarding intercultural and diversity research and planning, as well as anti-racism training for all faculty, staff administrators, and student leaders.

The intercultural center, said student Willina Cain, would be a place where anyone could gather and be protected from harassment.

"It's hard, you know, just going to the cafeteria, eating and hearing racist people be ignorant," Cain said. "With an intercultural center, I wouldn't have to hear racist people mock Mike Brown the day after (his death)."

"I'd just be eating in the center, you know."

As the protesting students left the auditorium, K-College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran credited them.

"I'm feeling pride," Wilson-Oyelaran said. "The students conducted themselves well and I think they represented their positions well. I think if I disagreed with them on anything, it would be probably be (with) their characterization of the nature of the conversations taking place."

"We've really been trying to get a detailed look of what students have experienced, which has involved two years of conversation," the K-College president said. She noted that a focus group held discussion held a year ago with students of color, and that its findings were disseminated to faculty, staff and administrators.

"Even in today's conversations I've heard the intercultural center be described as two different things," Wilson-Oyelaran said. "I don't disagree at all with the students' characterization of their experiences with marginalization -- and I also understand that when you're in the middle of that, it doesn't feel good.

"But it's about moving forward," she continued. "When we're trying to solve problems that are complicated and difficult, conversations are very important. It's our responsibility as an institution to find the venue that provides for healthy robust, difficult conversations."

For Lisa Brock, academic director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership and an associate professor of history, the student protest was a long time coming.

"I think our students are forced to handle race experiences on campus on their own," Brock said. "That's unfair and ... harmful to the (students') psyche."

"We need some institutional structures to manage that," she said.

Though Brock acknowledged K-College's moves toward a diverse campus climate, she acknowledged institutionalized racism, and pushed for the college to support the students' pleas for an intercultural center.

"I think K-College has diversified over the years, but physical diversity is not enough, given the fact that institutionalized racism exists," Brock said.

Students "need a place they can be themselves, where anybody would be welcome, a place that is not racist, not sexist, not homophobic," she said.

"It was acknowledged that those spaces were important to students -- and I think it's time for Kalamazoo."