Diversity is definitely not an “old, old wooden ship used in the Civil War era,” as our favorite anchorman would have us believe.

What’s less clear about diversity is whether or not it exists in the place we UND students call here and now.

Last year, I went to school in at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States with a metro population of more than 16.4 million people that speak 224 languages.

If LA is a melting pot, Grand Forks is a half-teaspoon measuring spoon with a hole in it.

During my orientation, I was told the 10-square miles of USC’s campus is the most culturally diverse 10-square miles on the planet. My first walk through campus — which was then home to a freshman class featuring students from 51 foreign countries — showed me right away the that university’s extensive advertising of its diversity was no joke.

When I arrived at USC, the director of admissions told me how upset he was they didn’t have a student from Wyoming in my class; other than that, they had the rest covered, with me being the sole North Dakotan.

There were well-funded diversity events every weekend and countless individual group-sponsored meetings every night. I once stumbled into a packed, extravagant Korean Christian gathering on my way home from the dining center. In fact, it was uncommon if I ever made it from my classroom to my dorm without seeing at least a flyer for a new religious, cultural or ethnic group’s meeting.

When I returned to Grand Forks — which the 2010 Census said has a population that’s 90 percent white — my first reaction was to scoff at the “diversity events” that UND and the city itself were trying to brag about holding. And for a while, I was convinced I’d resigned myself to a cultural vacuum devoid of any “real” variety to be excited about.

But now I see I just didn’t get it.

Los Angeles isn’t made “better” than Grand Forks because “white” is no longer the city’s majority race — on the other hand, anyone who thinks that makes LA automatically worse needs an entirely different lesson on prejudice.

You don’t need scale to be impressed by a community’s effort to expand its cultural boundaries. There’s nothing about the amount of money spent on advertising for diverse events that can make you appreciate them more.

USC had way more opportunities to try new things and meet new people. But as long as Grand Forks takes the events it puts on seriously and the people who attend them genuinely try to understand that the other 10 percent of the city are real people who deserve the same love and respect as the majority, then it doesn’t matter one bit that UND is located in the frigid Norwegian north.

Will Beaton is the editor-in-chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].