<p>My dad mentioned it to me earlier. At first, I thought he was just full of **** because he doesn't want me to leave Florida. However, I found a gawker article saying St. Louis is racist and segregated and an article in iowastatedaily.com saying that just last year there had been racism towards Asian-Americans.</p>
<p>I'm African-American, but still. It's never good when anyone discriminated against like that.</p>
<p>These were just a coule of articles, though. Is it really that bad? Also, I'm wondering if they'd be any worse than schools like USF in Florida, where he wants me to go to, but I'd rather not. I just feel like Iowa State and Mizzou are offering me a lot more in way of opportunities and scholarships. I don't see that going very far, however, if racism's a big part of their cultures. </p>
<p>And I was so excited about Iowa State and Mizzou, their honors colleges, etc. It seemed so perfect. I mean, I know there's always a catch, but I didn't think it'd be anything like that.</p>
<p>We are from Iowa, and my son is applying to Iowa State for 2014. I would be very suprised if racism is a big issue there. I see this was posted awhile back, so I hope this is still helpful, but when we visited the campus appeared racially diverse and friendly.</p>
<p>I hope this isn’t to late of a response as I just saw your post. In 1891 George Washington Carver was the first black student at Iowa State. He was encouraged by his professors to stay for his masters and then became Iowa State’s first black professor. He went on to become one of the most famous botanist due to research that he did at Iowa State. The football stadium is named for Jack Trice who was a young African-American student who died from injuries sustained in a 1923 football game against Minnesota at Minnesota. It is the only Div. 1 stadium named for an African American individual.
Iowan’s have always had a history of being very fair minded and egalitarian. It is a university of over 28,000 students so there may have been an incident as there could be anywhere with a large population of a variety of students but that would not be common or acceptable. I would say that Iowa State is not racist and would have fewer incidents than other Div. 1 schools.</p>
<p>I’d go with your first thoughts about your dad mentioning it to you. Granted, there are people everywhere who are outliers and will do stupid things and can end up being called racist. However, Iowa State is a great university, I didn’t attend there but I did work in Ames right off the campus for a while and routinely saw groups hanging out together that were multi-racial.</p>
<p>No more than you would at a school like UF or FSU. My daughter will be attending in Fall, 2014 and I have done graduate work at ISU. The culture in Iowa is definitely not as racist as I have seen in the South (I have lived in both Tennessee and Mississippi). Just be ready for the winters - my first winter at Purdue was an eye opening experience having grown up in Southern California and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I like Iowa State, and I feel safe sending my daughter there (she will be a Mechanical Engineer like me). I think it is a fine school with solid academics especially for a state its size. Recruitment out of the engineering college is very strong (a big plus for my daughter). The major downside is Ames itself which does not have the cultural offerings of a city like Iowa City. In that it is like West Lafayette (where my alma mater Purdue is).</p>