A man wearing a Confederate hoodie was spotted at an American University dining hall last week, prompting nearby students to express their concerns about him to a university police officer. After reviewing the incident, school officials said he was there lawfully.

Fanta Aw, the vice president of campus life and inclusive excellence at AU, wrote in a campus-wide email that the man in question was not a student, but was with a guest of a student and was not breaking any school policies (American University owns DCist’s parent company, WAMU).

An AU student wrote in a Facebook post, which was shared more than 65 times, that her friend told the man to take off the hoodie because it was offensive, and that he replied, “Good.” The student wrote that dining hall staff did not intervene until she said she was “anxious and could no longer eat.” The Terrace Dining Room had a “Spanish Night” theme that evening, according to The Eagle.

Aw wrote in her email that “We recognize that the symbol of the Confederacy represents much pain, division, and a complex history of slavery and racism. So this episode, brief as it was, has prompted difficult and important discussions about how challenging it can be to resolve the tensions between freedom of expression and diversity and inclusion.”

Confederate imagery on campus and racist incidents have roiled AU in the recent past. In 2017, when Taylor Dumpson began her term as the first black female student body president, someone hung bananas on strings shaped like nooses on campus marked with an acronym for the predominantly black sorority of which was a member. The incident led to calls from members of Congress for a civil rights probe and AU students walking out of a town hall in protest. Later that year, ten posters of Confederate flags with raw cotton attached were discovered on campus.

In her email, Aw wrote that “we continue to grapple with the responsibility that comes from holding values that can come into conflict.”