Among the most popular Halloween costumes this year are: Left Shark, Harley Quinn, Star Wars, the ‘What color is it?’ dress, Snapchat rainbow mouth, a pirate and the ever-reliable witch.

However, those projected to also be among the top Halloween costumes this year? Kim Davis. Donald Trump. A Mexican. Bill Cosby. Caitlyn Jenner.

These are costumes that might get a few chuckles as you mingle with friends, but to a Mexican student watching you walk into the party wearing a sombrero and a mustache it is anything but humorous.

At the Sept. 30 public forum “Discussion on Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion at Iowa State,” which took place on campus, one of the student panelists stated that a friend dressed up as a Mexican and that she felt uncomfortable.

This panel was a chance for multicultural students to express to administration the challenges they’ve faced and the discrimination they’ve felt while at Iowa State. More than 550 students, faculty, staff and administration sat in the Great Hall listening to students share story after story of discriminatory comments and events that made them feel unwelcome and unsafe in their own residence halls.

This panel was a chance to start a conversation about thinking inclusively and treating our fellow students, faculty and staff more fairly, a chance to start our walk as a campus community in the right direction toward a more aware, welcoming campus.

With Halloween right around the corner, the risk of taking two steps back is far too high.

We’ll admit that we’ve come a long way in this country — after all, we have such a diverse emoji selection — but we have so much further to go.

Some are asking why this is even a conversation. Halloween is just a holiday disguised as an opportunity to justify dressing like a slutty cat or Magic Mike, right?

One could argue that people possess their First Amendment right to express themselves and dress up as whatever or whoever they want to for Halloween.

But that doesn’t make it right.

We know you want to have fun on Halloween. Have fun. Be creative. If you want to go to the bars dressed like a slutty cat, dress like a slutty cat. However, as a young woman says in one of the BuzzFeed videos that had people of different cultures try on costumes that mock their culture, “There are ways to be sexy without disparaging another person’s culture.”

Another BuzzFeed video that asked Native Americans to try on “Indian costumes,” featured a young man who said, “I always dread this time of year because of racist costumes.”

“A costume like this puts Native Americans in the past, as if we’re not real people today,” another participant says.

The moral of the story?

Don’t dress up as anything you could check on a census form.