At Tuesday night's State of the College address, President William D. Adams proudly spoke about the Class of 2014's unprecedented diversity. Admissions recruited a class with an impressive 24 percent of its students coming from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. President Adams also assured the crowd that Colby will continue its "aggressive agenda" of recruiting diverse applicants. The College is committed to bringing together a Class of 2015 that includes at least 20 percent of its students from underrepresented backgrounds and 10 to 13 percent of its students from international backgrounds.

We applaud the College for committing itself to these goals and for continually seeking to diversify our campus. If the College is indeed successful, it will be making an important step toward becoming a truly diverse institution.

At this point in time, Colby is, to a certain extent, artificially diverse. In an ideal future, we won't need to talk about how to attain diversity. we will simply celebrate it as part of whom we are. Currently, we compartmentalize "diversity" into statistics about race and religion, into clubs and events designed to focus on highlighting diversity. It will always be important to talk about our differences and to celebrate and remember them because our differences help to make us who we are. However, we would like to envision a future here where our diversity isn't questioned, where the College is able to achieve its ultimate goal, where we have students from all walks of life and where diversity isn't an ideal we need to pursue, but a reality that we live.

While the future described above is a lofty goal, we are proud of the direction in which Colby is moving, and we applaud the College for placing such a premium importance on further diversifying the Colby community.

- The staff of the Colby Echo