The campus of North Carolina State University is awe-inspiring, not for the sheer size of it, but rather for the small little spaces that inhabit loving, diverse and important communities. NC State holds different centers located in different parts of the campus including the GLBT Center, Multicultural Student Affairs, the Women’s Center and the African American Cultural Center. 

These centers, aptly named community centers, are about bringing students together; however, students are not taking the initiative to building a more connected community here at NC State. The NC State student body, to put it diplomatically, is a very intriguing student population — students here do not participate in the more interesting parts of the campus.

For example, people come in droves to football and basketball games. That by itself is not an issue; however, that same energy is not seen when it comes to campus events, and by consequence participation and use of campus community centers is minimal at best.

These centers are here for the students to use in order to enhance their experience at college. Students shortchange themselves from life-changing experiences and on a macro level a much more interconnected campus when they don’t use what is available to them.

College is about broadening your horizons, at not just an intellectual or academic level, but on a more personal and even a spiritual level. Students should want to interact with people that are different from them not just in appearance, but also in worldview, experiences, ideas and beliefs. More frankly, students should not keep themselves from going to the GLBT Center, for example, because the people in there appear to be different from them — students are doing themselves a disservice by not interacting with those individuals.

Program coordinator for the GLBT Center Andy DeRoin highlights this as a big part of the GLBT Center.

“The GLBT Center is here to engage, develop and empower GLBT students and their allies, and it’s all about meeting people where they’re at,” DeRoin said. “We are here to have a conversation about anything and we really try to use our events and programs to hold conversations. Our goal is to engage others in conversation about challenges in society.” 

College is the only place people coming from all different life experiences can interact at a very intimate level. What I want to bring home is that whether your community back home is very homogenous or multicultural, it would be hard to replicate the opportunity to have this level of proximity and intensity of interaction with different communities.

Even more than interaction, community centers offer resources that help students both academically and personally. The community centers offer drop-in counseling hours where students can come in and get counseling for any issues they have.

These resources are ready and available students, and I would like to emphasize this point to marginalized communities, because I feel that at a college this expansive no student should feel isolated. No one student should “fall through the cracks.” There are people, staff and students who want to meet you and interact with you. We as human beings have a need for connection, we are social beings who need a community in order to function at our highest capacity.

This is not just me postulating this, but research shows it in our brain architecture — specifically the brain’s neocortex being bigger than other primates. The neocortex is the part of the brain used for language, empathy, concise thought and higher cognition, among other functions. Essentially, human beings are hard-wired to be social creatures that have a need for social connection and a community that affirms them.

This is why we need community spaces like the student centers on campus, especially for marginalized communities, and this is why students need to use these resources. When I talk to my peers, I get tired of hearing of how they feel lonely and disconnected from their school and the only thing keeping them here is their need to get a degree. 

I get tired, not because of any disrespect for the individuals, but because there are resources on this campus, and we, as the student body, need to take the initiative to reach out and encourage one another to create a loving community. A big step for this is to use the community centers on campus, to use these resources that are here to bring about a loving community.

I want to leave the reader with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about community: “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”