Today, I come to you with a heart heavy with emotions, most of them mixed, for this is my final column for the Iowa State Daily.

Come May 11, after 5 years as an ISU student, I will be standing up with the other 3,000 or 4,000 graduating seniors of the class of 1996 to receive my degree.

Though it may sound clich‚, I can’t believe it’s happening.

Amazingly, I don’t feel the rush of anticipation that I would have expected (actually, I just want to get finals out of the way).

Instead, I’ve been in a rather introspective mood and just a bit melancholy.

As I move on to the next set of life’s challenges, I can’t help but look back upon the experiences I’ve had as a Cyclone and a young American coming of age in the ’90s. Many have been positive, but many have been negative.

I’m often asked, now that it’s almost over, if I look fondly back upon my college career.

I’m happy to say that my first memories of ISU were relatively happy ones.

I came to ISU the summer of 1991 to participate in a program then called the Summer Enrichment Program, now called the Carver Academy.

That summer gave me a taste of what Iowa and college were like and allowed me to meet other students of color. I definitely credit SEP with no small portion of whatever success I’ve had here at ISU.

I made the decision to come to ISU largely on the strength of my initial impression of then Director of Minority Student Affairs Dr. George Jackson, the assistant dean of the Graduate College.

Dr. Jackson convinced me that ISU was committed to diversity and successfully graduating students of color.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that wasn’t always the case. After 5 years at ISU, I’m forced to say that I think the administration pays more lip service to diversity than anything else.

President Jischke doesn’t seem interested in aggressively pursuing the goal of a more diverse and tolerant college environment.

I remember, as Daily editor of the opinion page, being asked into his office to listen to his diversity plan pitch.

I left that meeting feeling that I’d just seen and heard a whole lot of pretty fluff, but no real commitment. Jischke proposed diversity training for faculty and staff, but was unwilling to make it or push for it to be compulsory.

Just this semester I wrote a column about the survey sent out by his Steering Committee on Diversity. In a nutshell, I said the survey seemed more like an attempt at gaining good “PR” for the university, rather than a serious attempt to ascertain what students think about diversity and multiculturalism.

But then, as a good friend of mine once noted, the administration’s entire approach to everything seems to be based on the question of public relations.

When a crisis erupts on campus, rather than addressing it in an open and intellectually honest manner — as befits a university — the administration goes into corporate-esque damage control mode, refusing to comment, squelching discussion and generally hoping it all blow over.

This very practice is at the heart of the Catt Hall debate. If the administration had done its job right in the first place, there wouldn’t have been a controversy.

But the group that has been the greatest cause of frustration for me and many other students of color has not been the administration. Rather, it has been the majority students, our peers.

I came to ISU hopeful for the future, believing that racism in America was rapidly declining and that the struggle for equality would soon be realized.

Thanks to many of my fellow students, I now realize that is far from the case. Racism, bigotry, intolerance, not to mention ignorance, are alive and well at ISU.

It manifests itself in the form of hate crimes such as the ones I experienced my freshman year in the residence halls.

In the UDA this semester, it manifested itself in the form of a student government executive board who resorted to underhanded politicking to promote their anti-diversity, anti-minority agendas. This situation is all the sadder for me because my freshman year we faced a similar board and while we didn’t “win,” we reached a compromise and we took a step forward. This year’s executive board managed to do away with the compromise. So as I leave ISU, I see a step has been taken backward.

But it isn’t limited to majority students. The African-American students leading the September 29th movement are blindly battling intolerance and bias with more intolerance and bias.

Having said all that, I would like to say I see tremendous potential here. ISU, as with universities in general, embodies many facets of America.

We are plagued with the problems of racism and intolerance because America is plagued with the problems of racism and intolerance.

I mention these problems not to dwell on them but to ensure that we find a way to solve them. Because if there exists a solution to these problems, it exists here.

It is here in America’s universities that the solution to America’s greatest challenge, making the American Dream come true for all Americans, will be overcome.

I of course have a thousand more things to say and not enough time or space.

I would like to bid you all a fond farewell. It’s been a fun ride and when asked my alma mater, I will proudly say ISU. I encourage you all to continue the struggle and wish you nothing but success in all your endeavors.

Peace … forever.

David Mosby is a graduating senior in political science from Chicago.