The university needs to work harder to achieve more diversity on campus. The numbers speak for themselves: for the past 10 years, USI’s minority percentage has hovered around 10 percent, leaving Caucasian student’s to dominate the campus.

How do you suppose this makes us look to prospective students who tour our campus? Walking around noticing that no one looks like them?

USI has been scorned for its low diversity levels in accreditation reports.

“USI is becoming recognized as much more than a city college; it needs to aspire to a campus society more representative of a broad region of mid-America,” reads the report issued by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities in 2006.

This has not happened, and there appears to be no real effort to make a change.

We see the university sprouting groups and clubs to try to draw attention to the issue, but sitting around talking about the problem and not doing anything to fix it won’t solve it.

USI’s white population is actually higher than the city we reside in: 87 percent of our students are white and 82 percent of Evansville’s population is white.

The bottom line is that diversity is important to the education of USI’s students. Being around students who are from different cultures and backgrounds helps us grow as adults facing the real world where there are a myriad of people different than us.

We aren’t given much breathing room if we spend four years of our lives living in the comfy state of ignorance.

We, the students, also need to do what we can to expand our knowledge about diversity.

It’s not all about race – it’s about cultural backgrounds and differences.

Do you go out of your way to learn about people who are different than you?

Try learning about other’s culture and see how it differs from yours.

Branch out and ask questions. But don’t be offended if someone asks you a question

. We’re at an institution where learning is important. If you get out and talk to one another, you may learn something new.

We need the university’s help to go forth and make the campus more diverse, but the students need to make themselves vulnerable and talk to someone they normally wouldn’t because he or she may be different. Otherwise, what’s the point of being a diverse campus if we don’t make everyone feel welcome?