About 60 percent of ISU students have never attended a multicultural event on campus, according to a recent survey.

The survey was completed by 1,500 students and was written by the Government of the Student Body.

Jon Turk, GSB speaker of the senate, GSB president-elect and junior in political science, said there could be a couple reasons for lack of attendance of these events.

“Sometimes the unfamiliar … will frighten some people,” Turk said.

Some of the major events various international student groups organized, such as Diwali night, had successful turnouts from students in the group, but lacked in attendance from other ISU students, Turk said.

“It’s mainly because students are unfamiliar with the culture and unfamiliar with the event,” Turk said.

Events organized for weekdays and poor advertising could also be a reason students are not attending multicultural events, said Sine Tepe, treasurer of the Turkish Student Association and graduate student in economics-Liberal Arts and Sciences.

AlthoughTurkish Night boasted nearly 200 attendees, Tepe said there are various steps that can be taken to increase awareness of other multicultural events on campus.

“More advertising could be done to announce these kind of events,” Tepe said.

Turk also said tasks GSB will be doing next semester to increase attendance of multicultural events. Turk said keeping a good dialogue with the GSB’s director of diversity would help. Next year the director of diversity will have his or her own Web page on the GSB Web site that will advertise different multicultural events on campus, he said.

Turk said he also hopes GSB support more international organization events.

Turk would like the GSB director of diversity to attend senate meetings and give updates of multicultural events on campus in order to inform GSB.

Tepe said she agrees that GSB should be more involved with multicultural events in order to make them successful, including providing more funding to thise types of events.

“So that tickets could be sold at lower prices so that students can attend the events,” Tepe said.

She said the cost of the multicultural events may also deter students from participating.

Tepe also said the cost of catering and reservation costs are the Memorial Union are both pretty costly. She said many groups hold events off campus to save money, which drives down attendance. However, for some students, the main reason students are not attending multicultural events is because they do not know when they are being held, said Molly Clark, sophomore in pre-journalism and mass communication.

“I would probably be more likely to go to a multicultural event if I knew when and where it would be,” Clark said.