I came to NC State seeking anonymity. I grew up attending schools with extremely small class sizes — my high school graduating class was 106 students. With 34,000 students, I was hoping NC State would offer me a fresh start with people who didn’t know every aspect of my life.

I stayed at NC State for the community. Almost from my first moment here, I was inundated with friendship, acceptance and opportunities to build a strong foundation for my life and future career. For someone who has sometimes crippling social anxiety, joining the NC State student body and being met with such profound welcome was a pleasant surprise.

Packapalooza, at the end of Wolfpack Welcome Week my first year, was the event that truly solidified my dedication to NC State, and my devotion to doing what it took to keep my position at this school. As I’m sure it is for many, for me, Packapalooza exemplifies the best parts of NC State’s community culture, all laid out in a massive block party along Hillsborough Street.

Wolfpack Welcome Week isn’t just Packapalooza, though; NC State’s first week of classes is packed with a multitude of events to welcome students (back) to campus. For five consecutive days, students get to experience and feel like the University truly cares that they are here, ready to learn and make names for themselves. For most, it’s a heady experience. For some, it’s a refreshing, hopeful experience as they navigate a space in which they are considered minorities.

Coming into the second week of classes, riding on the high of an action-packed Welcome Week, it becomes progressively clearer to students that the intensity they were met with upon entrance into college seems to be particularly limited to that first week. As classes pick up and students become busier with their academic, social and personal obligations, the magic of the first week starts to fade into a dangerously boring monotone.

The fostered sense of community that is the backbone of Wolfpack Welcome Week is something that needs to be encouraged and nurtured even beyond the first week of school. Students tend to find their own smaller circles of comfort and acceptance as the semester progresses, which is a natural and expected occurrence; slowly, though, the collective atmosphere at school dissipates.

There have been countless columns written about how students should make efforts to cultivate friendships and meet new people beyond the hubbub of Wolfpack Welcome Week. This is advice that I stand by, myself — without such continuous efforts, I would be in a much different place than I am now.

That being said, the responsibility of building an environment on a foundation of enthusiastic acceptance, welcome and community ideals should not fall solely on students. It should be a fundamental goal of university administrators to continue to foster a college experience for students that is as unconditionally receptive to any and all students as it is during Wolfpack Welcome Week.

Even small gestures such as weekly emails from university administrators reminding students that the people who granted them acceptance still want them there could go a long way to cementing students’ resolves to stay at NC State. University-sanctioned events such as Campus Connections, encouraging students to get involved and be a part of university culture are a good way to show that each individual student has an impact on our campus.

One of NC State’s biggest strengths, made bigger by the fact that we are the largest (land-grant) university in the state, is the thriving, growing, ever-changing community-oriented environment that exists across our massive student body. While it’s true that we, as students, will have our differences with one another at personal levels, the fact remains that we are all here at this university together, getting our respective educations before entering the world with the immense power to create change.

It would be a shame if university officials didn’t take advantage of the community that inherently exists, and use their positions as facilitators of our educations to make sure that each and every student at this university feels welcome and at home every day of their career at NC State. We all deserve to be here; it would be nice to be reminded of that every now and then.