After getting my rooming assignment last summer, I pictured myself appearing as a beaming face on the cover of the University of Illinois’ college viewbook. High school students everywhere were going to know my prototypical laughing face.

This is because my room is a gold mine of that stuff colleges and universities oh so covet: diversity.

With roommates last-named Mehta, Pena and Paglia, I was fully expecting the University’s PR department to be following our multicultural exploits with frenzied flashing lights and cameras. College brochures, after all, brim with pictures of bright young minds of convenient ethnic diversity. The steady stream of postcards and college propaganda addressed to my junior-in-high-school sister, for example, is littered with scenes of multihued students tossing around Frisbees on quads. What a perfect opportunity, then, for our University to benefit from the happenstance of my living situation.

Sooner or later, I figured, they would want our smiling brown, red, white and yellow selves to grace the cover of the University catalogue. It’d be just as glamorous as an ad for the United Colors of Benetton (visit YouTube for that multicultural stimulation).

It’s mid-April now, and as you might have guessed, the University has opted to exercise restraint. The cameras and flashing lights of University paparazzi have yet to show.

Woe is we.

While I might not make it to the cover page, this doesn’t mean I can’t get kicks thumbing through the leaflets colleges mail out en masse. For me, as much as I am sure it was for you, the college-hunting era was an exciting time. As a junior in high school, I hoarded college literature like Pokemon cards ready to be swapped and sold at exorbitant rates.

Part of me was just so damn excited to be getting mail. Finally, something other than a bank notice telling me about my 7.3 cents earned interest! But in large part, I was just happy to be the center of attention of so many schools’ recruiting efforts.

In brochures, every school looks picture-perfect. Quads flush with greenery. Professors caught in midsentence, mouths agape, index fingers pointedly jabbing at chalkboards. Students engrossed in deep conversation, their texts and notes strewn across library tables. I thoroughly enjoy flipping through the glossy pages.

My only reservation about college viewbooks is their perfect balance of racial diversity achieved on each page spread. It’s a bit of a spectacle to count the number of ethnicities that can be represented in a 30-page brochure. In a photo of happy-looking friends, the proportions of Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Inuit etcetera students are, more often than not, a balanced 1-to-1.

In the case of the University of Illinois, where fully 23 percent of the student population identifies as a minority, I find it a little silly and perhaps disingenuous for the University to go to such lengths to emphasize the presence of minority students in its catalogues and brochures.

The diversity on our campus is definitely noticeable as it is. The Daily Illini, as recently as Friday, headlined, “UI tops list for foreign enrollment.” About 5.5 percent of UI undergraduates are international students, the article goes on to explain, leading other public institutions in international students.

So while it might be self-gratifying (and a great opportunity to send mail to Grandma and Grandpa in Taiwan) for me and my roommates to star on the front cover of the University’s next set of viewbooks, I might just have to say that the University paparazzi team should focus on the realities of campus life.

Take snapshots of happy students as they are. No need to premeditate intercultural bonding.

That being said, my roommates and I will continue going about our diverse lives. And if the University is so inclined in featuring the four of us anyway, we practice tai chi every morning at sunrise and watch Bollywood films on Tuesday nights. Please call ahead to schedule an appointment.

Henry is a freshman in Business. He shamelessly solicits the good folks in charge of University recruiting efforts to come and invade his daily activities with their cameras.