You're probably white. If you're reading this, considering the demographics of this campus, odds are you aren't a student of color. If you are a student of color, thank you for supporting the Collegian's only non-white columnist. Keep reading as I write from the heart.

I am tired of feeling uncomfortable, of feeling like when I walk into a room all eyes are on me. I am sick of having slang thrown at me profusely or a hip hop topic being brought up at random as an insulting medium of connecting with me by white students. Stop assuming I grew up in the hood, know how to dance or I know dangerous people. Sometimes I feel like people of color are the circus of Penn State -- all eyes on us while a lighter crowd is surprised by our every action.

I was recently at a fraternity house where white kids pressured students of color to "do something." Brown people are not at Penn State to entertain. I was also in a discussion group recently during which a black girl shared her experience of a fellow Penn State student (who was white) being surprised at her success on an exam because she didn't do as well as the black girl. Are black students expected to perform well, but not as well as white students? Something has to change.

Contrary to what some people may think, there is diversity among those individuals considered minorities. If you know one individual who is black, that does not mean you know all black people. If you get to hear one Hispanic person's opinion, that does not make you are an expert on all Hispanics. Not all Asians are Informational Systems and Technology majors and not all Jewish people are penny pinchers. Not all white guys with greek letters on their shirts, ripped jeans and worn baseball caps are racist jerks, and not all blondes with tights and Ugg boots are sorority girls.

I think the biggest social problem on this campus is the fact that people take their senses too seriously. They treat people in the same manner they would a traffic light.

If the person looks like me -- green.

If they are doing something I might be interested in -- yellow.

But if they look completely different than I do and they're doing something that I would never do -- red.

I failed my driver's test four times, but even I know red means stop. It annoys me that for most individuals it is an involuntary action to avoid interaction with people with different qualities than their own.

No matter what Penn State students claim to major in, judging people seems to be the minor that we all share. But why? Is college not supposed to be the time for minds to be challenged and social networks expanded beyond the comfortable hues of what we are used to?

How about students try connecting with one another as one Penn State student to another Penn State student instead of from a white person to a black person?

The different ranges of skin color obviously exist.

Regardless of how beautiful the world would be if pigment was as irrelevant as hair color, this is not reality. This is why I am not trying to dismiss race; instead, I want to promote integration between people. What I have recently discovered is that there is no way a person of one race will ever understand the experiences of a person of another race. It seems like an obvious statement, doesn't it?

Well for those readers of color, here is a question that I am sure you could never really answer -- what does it mean to be white? Sure you could say that being white means an unwritten privilege in society. Or a person of color could argue that white people have the choice of whether or not to care about race, while people of color have no choice but to struggle with it. But what do you know about what it means to be white?

External factors may be listed endlessly, but not even another white person can really empathize with every single experience of another white person.

So how can people of color truly understand what it means to be white, or does that not matter? Historically, racism has meant the hegemony of white people over black people. But color actually has little to do with it when it comes to bigotry.

What I have learned is that experience makes a person, not color. Stereotypes are useless. Every single racial group has a variation of shades within its borders. So why do people of color feel so hesitant to ask a white person for help? Why do white people get nervous when speaking to brown people? Why all the tension?

I am sick of all of the tension here at Penn State. I thank my mom for teaching me that when I'm sick, I should seek a medicine.

I am diagnosing Penn State as a diseased campus, like campuses everywhere, with boils of students that judge, rashes of students that hate and open wounds of tension that not even this column will be able to stitch together.

But I offer my thoughts as Band-Aids and healing creams for a huge body that should be in intensive care instead of spreading its disease to the real world as students graduate.

So many individuals are leaving this campus untreated.

Even in the absence of racism, ignorance may thrive ferociously.

But growth comes connecting with people on personal levels, not racial ones.