I Reported It Because I Needed a Record

For a long time, I thought reporting an incident would only matter if I had one big, undeniable event that no one could minimize. My actual experience at ASU was different. What affected me most was the accumulation: comments that framed Black students as a problem to be managed, moments where I was singled out to explain racism to a room, and interactions that made me leave class feeling more exposed than educated. The incident that pushed me to take action was not loud in the way people expect harm to be loud. It happened during a classroom conversation that shifted quickly from uncomfortable to deeply isolating. A professor asked me to respond to a broad comment about “the Black perspective,” and when I pushed back on being treated like a stand-in for an entire community, the tone changed. Suddenly I was being framed as overly intense for naming something that should have been obvious. The conversation ended, but the feeling did not. What stayed with me afterward was not only the embarrassment. It was the confusion about what I was supposed to do next. I kept wondering whether it was serious enough, whether anyone would understand the pattern, whether I had enough evidence, or whether I would just be told to move on. That uncertainty is part of the harm too. Students often know something was wrong before they know whether an institution will recognize it as wrong. Eventually I decided to document it because I needed a record, even if nothing immediate came from it. I needed to write down what happened while I still remembered the details. I needed to stop treating the experience like it only counted if someone else validated it first. Reporting, for me, was not about revenge and it was not about trying to punish someone without due process. It was about refusing to let another incident disappear into silence. What I learned in that process is that support needs to be more visible and more coordinated. Students should not have to do detective work to figure out whether something belongs with a professor, a department, the Dean of Students, Title IX, or another office. When you are already carrying the emotional impact of an incident, even finding the right pathway can feel exhausting. I still think about how many students probably decide not to report because they are tired, unsure, or afraid of being dismissed. That is why projects like this matter. They create a place where experience becomes evidence instead of rumor. They make patterns easier to see. And they remind students that documenting what happened is not overreacting. Sometimes it is the first way you protect yourself and the people coming after you.