As kids we were told, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all.” A female student at CMU, who decided to disregard some of the most basic elementary school words of wisdom on Super Bowl Sunday, is currently learning this lesson the hard way.

After Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman was injured early in the fourth quarter of his team’s utter dismantling of the Denver Broncos, a message was sent out into the Twittersphere:

“Sherman injured? Good you f****ing n*****. #seahawkssuckc***.”

The student in question has since deleted her account after Black Twitter, a group focused on issues of interest to the black community, produced a hashtag in order to rally support against the student’s discriminatory remarks. Needless to say, they were more than successful. So successful, in fact, that they not only got her off Twitter but also found out her full name on Facebook, what school she goes to (her location was turned on) and where she is employed.

CMU’s official Twitter account, @ColoradoMesaU, responded to the backlash by assuring the public that the incident would be “referred to CMU’s Office of Student Services and the Student Conduct Officer” and that “the language used by the individual in question is not reflective of Colorado Mesa’s values as a university.”

In response to similar incidents at other universities, entire fraternities have been shut down. Students have been suspended, and appropriate social media conduct codes have been put in place and enforced. While this situation has yet to play itself out, it should not go unnoticed and should be taken much more seriously than it seems to be so far. At the very least, this student should be suspended and forced to spend a semester basking in the glory that was her own stupidity.

In an age when news travels faster than ever before, a college student who grew up surrounded by social media and technology should 1. Gain some perspective and learn that racism is not okay, 2. Have the common sense not to put something so rash on a site like Twitter, and 3. Be smart enough not to leave her location on, making it incredibly easy to find out all kinds of other personal information.

One can only hope that an incident like this encourages students on this campus and elsewhere to make perceptive choices, including diction, when conducting themselves in public. Whether or not it’s “on the record,” you should always be aware that anything that gets put on the Internet, especially on a site as popular and public as Twitter, is there to stay. Unless your profile is private, that kind of thing could absolutely pop up on a simple Google search of your name.

For the sake of this girl’s future, I’m glad her account is deleted. She might actually turn out to be a decent person. However, in the moment, my sympathies are such that she should serve as a prime example of the consequences of making immature decisions.

aildefonso@mavs.coloradomesa.edu