It feels strange to vote against diversity. Three dollars hardly justifies becoming a ballot box bigot, so the recent multicultural center referendum seemed destined to pass by a hefty margin.

Yet 47 percent of participating students voted no on the measure in the Government of the Student Body election, including this writer.

Is nearly half the student body stingy or intolerant enough to put three measly dollars ahead of thriving campus unity?

Lack of support had nothing to do with finances. The fee increase pales in comparison to tuition hikes or course packet costs or frappuccinos. It’s not intolerance, either. The location will be in the old Alumni Association office space, far removed from the average student’s beaten path. Most would never even encounter the center.

Wait. I think we’ve found the problem.

The obscure location almost guarantees that only those already willing to reach out to diversity will benefit. And even their benefit, considering the lame ideas proposed for the space, is questionable.

Students will not go out of their way to experience a lackluster atmosphere of culture. Effectiveness relies on convenience and creativity of ideas.

Venise McCown, GSB director of diversity, told the Daily she wanted to see a library in the center. Other prominent suggestions include study spaces, classrooms and lecture areas.

Unless you’ve been drugged by Parks Library staffers, there’s no reason to believe we need more “academic space” or we need more books in the face of the Internet research age.

A multicultural center is just another proposition in a long line of diversity-bolstering events that do very little to actually improve the state of anything on campus.

Students actively communicating facets of their culture and cultivating campus diversity sounds wonderful in theory. But with the proposed location and ideas, it will never happen. If anything, the center simply serves to further separate what little color there is on the ISU campus.

Let’s be honest: The three dollars might as well go straight to the university advertising budget as another way to purvey – while not really achieving – a more inclusive or challenging campus.

It wouldn’t be anything new. Major events like the Big XII Conference on Black Student Government and Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity (ISCORE) failed to truly mobilize any real campus-wide involvement.

The Big XII conference brought a previously unseen number of black college students to Iowa State. Yet the event easily passed under the noses of white students, being held over the weekend in the practically off-campus Scheman Building and Hilton Coliseum.

The school failed to even expose its student body to this large population of bright regional minority students, even when they arrived in our own backyard. I imagine, however, the event will make an admission brochure or two in the nine years before the conference returns to Iowa State.

Same with ISCORE, touted as one of the top conferences in its class in the country. It required registration, occurred on a Friday and suffered a lack of publicity, all simple ways in which this important diversity asset discouraged wider student appeal.

So when it comes to more money for a multicultural center, there needs to be a concerted effort to buck this track record of under-utilizing resources and concerning ourselves solely with how events look on the university’s resume.

Use that money with creativity and with a realistic attitude that — to truly benefit the cultural minority and majority – events must be unique, accessible and publicly advertised.

Have prominent minority figures debate professors on key political or social issues, rather than deliver bland lectures.

Partner with ISU Dining to bring cultural cuisine to central campus – during lunch – at consistent times for moderate prices. Pay student artists and musicians to set up shop in busy campus areas to spread the music or paintings of their respective cultures.

Fund increased circulation of the campus diversity magazine, Uhuru. Just do something creative.

Diversity stashed away in a cubicle doesn’t benefit anyone.

– Chris Sigmund is a junior in economics and political science. He is the Daily online editor.