The first weeks of college may be overwhelming for many students, but homesickness can compound on that stress, especially for multicultural students.

The Multicultural Student Affairs supports those students who feel homesick and help them in their personal and academic development.

On Sept. 2, the MSA prepared a special activity named Jump Start for the multicultural freshmen in the Memorial Union.

The Sun Room was filled with students from different cultures. Everywhere in the room, there were organizations, associations, fraternities and sororities that are influenced by multicultural students. The sounds of various languages could be heard by anyone who walked through the room. 

The main reason for Jump Start was to encourage new Cyclones to meet and interact with students that are from their same culture and guide them on how to become a successful ISU student.

The activity welcomed freshmen and even included some line dancing in order to make the evening more engaging for students. When the line dancing started, students danced to the rhythms of “Wobble,” “Blurred Lines” and the “Mississippi Slide.”

When asked how they felt about MSA, freshmen reacted in similar ways:

“We love MSA. We get to meet people like us and we have a whole room filled of our culture which makes us happy,” said Thomata Doe, open option sophomore.

Multicultural Student Affairs is located on the second floor of the Student Services Building. In there, you can find a good study place, a computer lab with free printing, games, hot chocolate and even free tutoring. MSA focuses mainly on helping multicultural students have academic success and understand their finances.

Most of the ISU multicultural students’ homes are not as far away as those of international students. However, like international students, they face many of the same challenges, including only being able to see family and friends for two or three weeks in December.

Idil Ahmed, sophomore in biology from Somalia, understands the difficulties of being so far away from her home and appreciates the services offered by MSA.

“MSA is a really good way to go. They understand and help you,” Ahmed said. “They don’t need improvements. They are perfect as they already are.”