Let’s all just take one big breath. One huge collective cleansing breath. Take it all in and let it all out.

Okay. Do you feel any better?

I know, I know. It’s hard to feel good these days with our university amassed in so much controversy.

Catt Hall. Racial tensions among students. GSB and Adam Gold.

It also makes me sad to think that our football team could realistically be 5-1, but we humbly sit with a record of 2-4 and a couple of heartbreaks.

What to do about it all?

First of all, if you feel strongly about any of these issues, do something to change or keep the name of Catt Hall.

Sign a petition or start one to impeach Adam Gold. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, DO SOMETHING.

It’s one of the many rights you have as an American. Do something to insure that your rights remain a liberty.

This is still a great country because you have the ability to do just that. This is also still a great university.

On the news the other night, I heard a black student say he didn’t think white Iowa State students thought there was a problem with racism on campus.

I disagree. As a white student, I know there is racism.

Along the same lines, as a straight person, I know there is discrimination out there against homosexuals.

As a female, I know there is sexual harassment and discrimination.

As a young person, I am aware that there is ageism — discriminating against older people solely based on how old they are.

One prerequisite for a student to attend a school of higher learning, like Iowa State University, is to prove his/her intelligence. You take tests. You attend class. You learn.

Any intelligent person, regardless of what color his/her skin is, knows there are many people in America whom are discriminated against daily.

Sure, there’s no known battery of tests to assess your level of prejudice or your knowledge of current events before you enter college, but the kind of people who go to college are not dummies.

Granted, there are a few students here who attend class, close themselves in their rooms and deal with the things in their own little worlds.

They don’t know the first thing about Catt Hall. They could care less. Those kind of students are here at ISU, but they are the very few who probably don’t know there is racism and other forms of discrimination on campus.

Most students know there are problems like these at our university. The informed students know what’s going on.

They listen to their fellow students who have opinions on the “hot” issues, and I hope they form their own.

They watch the news. They read the paper.

If you consider yourself an intelligent person, you should be able to discern between fact and opinion, and if something was racially motivated or not.

In Monday’s edition of the Daily, our student paper got the scoop on the beating of the student security guard.

It was a well-written article by Tara Deering. But the following day a follow-up article on the front page told of what black leaders were going to do about “this and other racially motivated incidents.”

There’s a problem with this. Tim Davis has already pointed it out.

The attack was not motivated by race. The attack was motivated by the investigation Mitchell began.

He asked for identification and the guys didn’t want to give it to him. The beating both verbal and physical began, then evolved into a racial battering.

The Department of Public Safety is now calling this a hate crime, and it should be considered one.

But because, as the Daily’s Editorial Board termed them, “a couple of good ol’ boys” committed a crime so atrociously vicious, don’t think that the rest of us don’t feel this crime is hideous.

Use your intelligence.

Don’t let Iowa State University become known as the university where racial tensions are high and student morale is low.

Let us become known as the university that learned how to disable volatile situations and come up with solutions to the problems that plague us.

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April Samp is a junior in journalism and mass communication and speech communication from Eldora.