The University of Canberra has threatened students with possible suspension should they be found guilty of uploading a racist image on social media that caused outrage in the academic community.
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Late last week, a digitally altered image of the university's website including "highly offensive" racist language was uploaded to a Facebook page designed for the student community.
The UC Confessions page, which is not affiliated with the University of Canberra, promises users "all posts are and will always be anonymous" and allows students to contribute content through an online survey tool.
According to the university, staff urged Facebook to remove the offensive content from the page but the service refused to take action.
The university also urged the administrators of the Facebook page to remove the racist content but they did not do so until several days later.
Simon Hunter, a second-year student at the university, said the indigenous community at the Bruce campus were outraged by the post and demanded strong action be taken against the perpetrators.
"Any student who was involved in this should be thrown out on their ears and any student who liked it should be made to take a cultural education program," he said.
"We are down here busting our asses to break the negative stereotypes about our people and then this happens."
A University of Canberra spokeswoman said if the people responsible for creating and distributing the image were found to be students then action would be taken under the Student Conduct Rules 2012.
"The rules (…) prohibit behaviour by students found to be offensive to other students or members of university staff," she said.
"Under the rules, a student may be suspended or excluded from all or part of the university or ordered to pay compensation if the student is found to have engaged in prohibited conduct as defined in the rules."
The spokeswoman said a number of staff and students had contacted the university with concerns about the offensive content.
"The university is highly offended by this image, which has caused distress to our staff and students," she said.
"Our community does not tolerate racism and offensive behaviour."
Mr Hunter, who was also speaking on behalf of other indigenous students at the university, said the perpetrators were not representative of the university but their actions could undermine indigenous initiatives.
"The university is very supportive of us as a group and the mechanisms they have in place to help us success are great, but we want to see tangible outcomes from this," he said.
"We want to see people become aware that when they say things like this there are consequences for the indigenous community.
"A lot of Australians use derogatory terms about Indigenous communities and those negative views hold our communities back because they then think they are not worthy of aiming for higher things in life."
Mr Hunter said the student community should celebrate indigenous success so indigenous students were never prompted to ask themselves: "Why would I put any effort in?"
When the University of Canberra issued a statement via their Facebook page earlier this week they were praised by students for their efforts to address the issue.
"Glad to see the university is taking action and not letting things like this slip under the radar," said one student.
The administrators of the UC Confessions were contacted for this story.
