Michigan State University officials have banned whiteboards on students' dorm room doors, saying they are used too often for harassment.
Pupils at the East Lansing school will not be allowed to display the decorations starting next semester, administrators told the Detroit News.
Though giving the tools of near-anonymous expression to 18 year olds has always brought obscenities along with cute messages and drawings, the policy change comes after one board was allegedly used for hate.
A black honors student had the N-word written on her board, the Lansing NAACP posted on Facebook last week.
Cooper did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether whiteboards are currently allowed.
"There was no one incident that was the straw that broke the camel's back," Kat Cooper, director of University Residential Services Communications, told the Detroit News, adding that harassment on the boards has occurred regularly and there has not been a noticeable increase recently.
The NAACP said that MSU police told them then that all boards were being removed, though Cooper said that the university is not removing boards currently on doors.
She added that the whiteboards were no longer necessary as a form of communication given the prevalence of social media and texting, and that they have become a distraction rather than helpful.
Some Michigan State students have questioned whether the whiteboard ban will be effective in combating racism on campus, saying that it does not address the underlying issue of why someone would scrawl hateful messages on someone's door.