Racist Mascot?

Introduction
Mainly the reason I chose to come to the University of Illinois was for the Economics. I am the oldest of 6 so I have family obligations. I know for a lot of students here don’t live more than two hours away. Most people are from Illinois. There are many ways to get here, and it’s very accessible to other cities like Bloomington and Chicago. It’s close. The tuition is a lot more reasonable than going out of state. It’s a really good school. We have one of the best engineering schools and communications schools.

Campus Life and Social Life
We have the largest library. It’s really helpful. I wish I would have used it more before my senior year. There is a library for everything. There is a women’s study library; there is a foreign languages library. There is a journalism library. There is a mathematics library. There is a library of communications. There are like a billion books there. There is a really good catalogue system there. The people that go work there will go get the books for you so you don’t have to go through everything. It’s really great. It’s a lot of useful information. You can pretty much find a book on everything. Advertisement
Academics
As far as racial politics, I don’t know if it the school so much necessarily, but U of I does have a clouded history. There was a Chapter of the KKK on this campus during the 1930s and the 1940s. Now the biggest on issue that is dividing out campus is the use of our school mascot, Chief Illiniwek, and whether or not it is discriminatory or racist. The minority population is very small at this school. Even in Champaign, in Central Illinois, the town isn’t very minority friendly. Sometimes there are problems. If you go out on a Friday night, and it is held by a black organization, about half of Champaign county police force will be on that party. Whereas if you go to Greene Street, where most of the bars are and where most of the White students are, no one is there. There is a little racial tension at times on campus. Academically speaking you will get through fine. But everything isn’t sunshine and roses.

Student Body
The vast majority of students here are Caucasian. The African-American population here is about 5 percent. Out of a school of 36000, there are about 2000 blacks. The Latino population is about 7 percent. There is a lot of cultural diversity. A few weeks ago there was Indian Night, so there was a big party with food and dancing. There are a lot of different cultural activities in front of the Union. They do a lot of different things to promote cultural awareness. There is a group for just about everything. There is an Asian Association and a black student Association. Pretty much whatever ethnicity or religion there is, there is a group for it, and they do something.

In Closing...
I don’t party so much myself, not anymore. There is a lot of partying. I don’t think it is more so than any other town. I’ve visited other schools, and I don’t think we do anything more than them. For the most part, it is just good, clean fun. You don’t have any real responsibilities yet as a college student. You are still living off your parents’ rent or your college loans so you want to do a little crazy stuff because in 3 weeks you are going to go off into the real world and wish you had stayed at undergrad a little longer.