Those who think Iowa State has virtually no diversity should visit the University Student Apartment Community (USAC).

USAC has residents from all over the world. There are individuals from East Africa, India, the Middle East, Russia, China and many other areas living here. Natives of Iowa make up only a small portion of the students living in USAC.

The ethnic diversity in USAC is interesting, but far more amazing is the philosophical and cultural diversity that exists there.

There are traditional Islamic women who wear full Islamic dress including veils and other Islamic residents who wear Western clothing.

There are USAC residents from communist countries who strongly support their governments and others who will quietly express reservations.

There are some USAC residents who keep many traditional customs of their homelands and others who are assimilated and adopt contemporary American culture.

Some residents have strong religious convictions, others are agnostic and still others have hostile reactions to organized religion. There are both liberal and conservative students who live there as well.

But much of the diversity in USAC does not officially exist if you only look in the statistics that are published. Most of the students who live here are classified as international rather than minority students at Iowa State.

Keep this in mind when you hear that ISU is not diverse because of the low minority enrollment at ISU and the low minority graduation rate.

At ISU, roughly 5 percent of students are classified as minorities and an additional 10 percent are international students. But isn’t someone who is ethnically Chinese and a citizen of China just as much a minority as someone who is ethnically Chinese and a citizen of America?

I would say that international students face even greater discrimination and lack of cultural understanding than American citizens.

It would be interesting to have international students at Iowa State also be classified as minority students.

Not only would the official number of minorities on campus triple, but the minority graduation rate would increase tremendously.

International students are often the best students on campus, earning top grades and advanced degrees.

The average number of hours spent studying per week is higher for international students than for U.S. citizens, so their proportional success should be no surprise.

USAC is a great success story at ISU.

International students are living there in great numbers and achieving tremendous academic accomplishments because of their hard work. However, the loudest diversity advocates at ISU do not praise USAC or even mention it much.

This is easily understood because of the ideology that is often promoted by diversity activists.

Multicultural activist Angela Davis, who spoke on “Women Race and Class” at ISU a few years back, was the vice-presidential candidate in the 1988 national elections with the American Communist Party.

Milton McGriff, who was the most outspoken member of the September 29th Movement last year, is a former Black Panther.

The advice given by diversity activists rarely holds much promise in helping to duplicate the success of USAC.

It is often just tired liberal rhetoric on “victimology” that rationalizes failure rather than teaches the habits of success.

Their advice is often counter-productive. For example, multicultural leader Jane Elliot handed out a flyer during her lecture at ISU last year that contained a list of statements.

If you agreed with a statement, it meant that you “held racist assumptions.”

One of these statements was, “I should not be held responsible for the behavior of my ancestors.”

Is it progress to hold people responsible for things they didn’t do?

USAC wouldn’t be a better place if people went bonking each other over the head saying things like “That’s for slavery!” or “That’s for the rape of Nanking!” or “That’s for sacking Carthage!” now would it?

Isn’t racial forgiveness and treating each other as individuals a better way?

However, when was the last time you heard multicultural activists call for color-blindness? That would put them out of a job!

I’ve lived in USAC for the past few years, and the last thing we need is to have university money spent on multicultural “facilitators” to Balkanize our community and divide us into neat little groups based on our assigned “ethnic identity.”

Keep that self-segregation nonsense in the Ivy League!

It should be clear to anyone not trapped inside a philosophy that romanticizes failure that there is diversity at Iowa State.

Those who say that there is not should really get out more.

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Benjamin Studenski is a senior in industrial engineering from Hastings, Minn.