Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream where one day his children would be judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” These are the best-remembered words of his “I Have a Dream” speech which he delivered on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial. Those words inspired our nation to look to a future where the government would consider race to be as irrelevant as eye color, and where we would be judged based on our individual actions.

However, the words of King require there to be a response to the failed hunger strike this fall and other efforts to bring expanded multicultural programs to our campus. The response should not be that “we all want to do more to promote multiculturalism, but we just don’t have the money.” Instead, the response should be to promote a color-blind campus as an alternative to multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is great for a handful of activist faculty and students who define it, set the rules and punish “the intolerant.” But most students lose out.

Don’t forget that the often joked-about term “political correctness” was first used to describe the repressive tactics used by proponents of multiculturalism on college campuses against those who did not agree with them. Should we become like the Ivy League and bring numerous salaried multicultural activists to campus? That should be about as attractive as starting up a local “House Un-American Activities Committee.”

The multicultural horror stories from campus around the country are well-known. Stanford had restrictive “speech codes” determined by committees of activists that controlled what students could say. Virtually all top law schools have banned recruitment by the military on their campuses. Fraternities have been kicked off of numerous campuses to promote egalitarianism.

Even the American flag has been taken down and is no longer flown on many campuses in the name of tolerance. (It was thought some international students might take offense to it.) At schools such as Swarthmore, the U.S. flag only returned after strong student and alumni objection to its removal.

At the University of Pennsylvania, a student was nearly suspended due to hypersensitive multicultural activists. He was studying late one night when a noisy group of students outside his window disturbed him. So he opened his window and said, “Be quiet you water buffalo!” The students outside his window were black, and this was taken as some sort of racial slur.

At his “trial,” if you will, the student was told by a diversity-police panel member, “So, what I hear you saying is that you were calling them big black animals from Africa.” It was only after the case became public and was ridiculed around the country that the University of Pennsylvania dropped the charges. The administration and the university came out of the affair looking foolish. Oh, and in case you were wondering, water buffalo are actually from Asia.

The University of Pennsylvania fell into public ridicule in newspaper columns and media stories once more when a campus organization “representing” black students stole an entire edition of the campus newspaper and destroyed it. They did this because an article had appeared in it that argued against racial preferences. The students who did this were not punished, reprimanded, hauled before a diversity panel, or punished in any way. This is probably because these students said they were “fighting intolerance.”

Some would say Iowa State University students should be willing to pay the price that students at other universities have paid when diversity activists are given power over them. This is because it will only be “temporary” (anyone heard that one before?) and will lead to a more tolerant campus in the future. But where is the evidence to support this? Do we see that happening in the Ivy League? Don’t many policies to promote multiculturalism simply make matters worse?

The scholar Thomas Sowell made a great analogy about this issue. He said the tactics used by universities to promote diversity were like hiring someone to loudly beat drums late at night in dormitory hallways in order to promote sleep. If people complain about the noise keeping them awake, this means that they are “anti-sleep” and that even more drums are necessary so the university can combat intolerant attitudes like that.

If a handful of activist students and faculty want racial hypersensitivity and separation under the banner of multiculturalism, they should just promote it to their circle of friends and not make it university policy. ISU should embrace the idea of a color-blind society as described in the “I Have a Dream” speech. Let’s make ISU not only the best land-grant university, but also make it the first color-blind one.

Benjamin Studenski is a junior in industrial engineering from Hastings, Minnesota.