During these past few summer months, we had the opportunity to digest the campus unrest that occurred last year. We saw the local and national media buzz slowly disappear. But after being away for a couple of months, it could be tempting to ignore what transpired last year, to fall back into a pattern of ignorance and neglect of how students are treated on campus.

Yes, it is true that over the past year we have lost three curators, three deans, our system president, the chancellor and two athletic directors, plus our head football, baseball and tennis coaches. But that only proves all the power is in our hands as students. While national perception of MU may be that we are a campus in turmoil, I think that gives us, the student body, an opportunity to come together and begin a new era here at MU.

If we want to show the country that we are a school that is thriving and moving forward and not one that is self-imploding, it all starts with how we treat each other. It won’t matter who they hire as UM System president or MU chancellor if the student body doesn’t come together and stand as a united front.

This is on all of us, from the peach-fuzz-faced freshmen to the gray-haired seniors. We all have a responsibility to this school to leave it better than how we found it, to be proud of what we did here at MU and to make MU graduates across the world proud of their alma mater.

Now, to all of you freshmen: You have a lot of this responsibility because you are the ones who will be here the longest and the ones who can enact the most change. College is a place where you are told that you are allowed to express yourself. It’s a place where you get to start over and become the person you want to be. Embrace the different, be different and love each other’s differences. If we just learn to accept everyone for who they are — except KU, we can never accept them — MU will once again be a place students want to come, a school that people will be proud to call home and a place to fall in love with.

There are more than 30,000 students who attend this university and only a handful of system administrators. Our ability to just treat each other better and accept differences can have more of an impact than 12 administrators in a room dictating policies. They can make all the policy changes they want, but without us following them or taking the lead in creating a better university, nothing is going to change.