Two ISU students are trying to bring all campus clubs and organizations into a centralized location.

Amanda Berenguel, junior in child and family services, and Jason Smolka, senior in electrical engineering, said they have pushed for a multicultural community center for more than a year. Both would like the center to be open to all campus clubs. “I want there to be a place for diverse people on campus,” Berenguel said. “Everybody and anybody would be welcome.”

Berenguel said the center would be a positive addition to campus because it would centralize all clubs and organizations, allowing organizers easier contact and inter-organizational meetings.

She said the center would help different clubs meet and plan events together, including fashion shows, fundraisers or awareness campaigns.

“This will benefit every single student on campus, not just minorities,” she said.

Smolka said the center would allow students to embrace their differences. “It’s a way to express our individual cultures, and how our differences come together to define America,” he said.

The center will be needed after Helser Hall is torn down since the building is home to the offices of two cultural organizations at Iowa State: the Asian and Hispanic groups, Smolka said. The Black Cultural Center is located at 517 Welch Ave.

“Currently, there are three cultural centers on campus,” he said. “This center will not just replace them, it will improve them.”

Berenguel said she started a petition for a center last year, but nothing came of it. Smolka said he has met with President Gregory Geoffroy and with Vice President for Student Affairs Thomas Hill. Smolka said Hill was receptive to the idea of the center, but didn’t know how feasible it would be.

“We really have to define what the center is,” Hill said. “That conversation has been going on around campus for a long time.”

He said one reason the center has not already been implemented is because different faculty and students have different ideas for the center, and a definitive plan for the center has not been reached.

“Until we can get these ideas together, we won’t be able to move forward very fast,” he said.

Berenguel said circumstances changed recently when the two met with Todd Herriott, coordinator of disability resources, at a multicultural leadership summit. She said Herriott was interested in their ideas and said he is helping develop the center.

Herriott, a member of the president’s committee on diversity, said he talks to many students who are interested in a center that can be seen as a central cultural point on campus.

“One question we had was if the university is committed to diversity at Iowa State, then why is there no visible place of diversity on campus?” Herriott said. “The idea of a multicultural community center came out of that.”

He said he wants to stress, however, that diversity is not just race or ethnicity, but all the differences that every individual has. Herriott said the center would be for all students to have a place that welcomes them.

“The center needs the support of the administration,” he said. “It needs to be put in their master plan.”