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Home > Featured Stories > Embracing Diversity > January 2008 > New Center Supports GLBT CommunityNew Center Supports GLBT Community
With the creation of this center and dedicated staff, NC State has achieved a huge milestone in addressing the needs of the GLBT community.
Justine Hollingshead, director of The GLBT Center at NC State
NC State's GLBT Center will celebrate its opening on Wednesday, Jan. 23 in the first-floor lobby of Talley Student Center.
By Mick Kulikowsi, News Services
Everyone is welcome here.
That's the message of a new campus center - the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Center - poised to celebrate its grand opening at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 23, in the first-floor lobby of the Talley Student Center.
The new center will, according to NC State administrators, focus on educating the university community and serving as a support system for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
"We want the center to be educational for the entire campus community, not just one segment of the population," says Dr. Jose Picart, NC State's vice provost for diversity and African-American affairs. "Diversity by nature is not necessarily harmonious, so we need to make diversity - and this center - part of the fabric of the university. It must be welcoming not only to the GLBT community, but to everyone.
"We hope the center's activities and outreach will tell people that this is a good environment for all students."
Many of the center's spring activities and outreach programs have already been planned, say Dr. Deb Luckadoo, director of NC State's Campus Activities unit, and Justine Hollingshead, director of the GLBT Center.
The center is slated to hold "brown bag" lunches on the last Thursday of each month, starting in January, they say. Topics include supporting GLBT students in the classroom, transgender awareness, and creating GLBT "allies," or people who are more than just tolerant of GLBT community members.
Luckadoo says that the center also plans to invite speakers who focus on combating hate and discrimination, and developing GLBT allies. One such program is "Journey to a Hate-Free Millennium," a nationally recognized documentary and facilitated discussion scheduled for the Witherspoon Campus Cinema on Feb. 18 at 7 p.m.
Luckadoo adds that GLBT Center programs are "a support system that benefits everybody, not just GLBT students."
Besides managing the center's activities, Hollingshead will conduct diversity training across campus.
No stranger to NC State, Hollingshead founded the university's "Project SAFE" program more than a decade ago while serving as a staff member with University Housing. That program has trained more than 300 faculty, staff and students to be GLBT allies.
"Creating a place that is a safe, non-judgmental environment for all people - including members of the GLBT community - is one of the university's priorities," Hollingshead says. "In a place of higher learning, our university community needs to become more knowledgeable about the issues that face the GLBT community, and the trends, climate, and strategies for creating these safe places in our educational setting. As the new director, it will be my overarching goal to strategize ways to develop our campus into a safe place for all people."
Hollingshead said that she will work to create this safe place through partnerships with entities like AEGIS, Accepting and Embracing Gender Identity and Sexuality, the student organization formerly known as BGLA; programming efforts like Everyone Welcome Here events; the creation of an alumni constituency group; and Project SAFE ally training.
Both Picart and Luckadoo stress that the GLBT Center, in addition to addressing the climate concerns for the GLBT population, is an important step to putting NC State on a level playing field with peer institutions, as 13 of 16 national peers already have a GLBT Center or similar functioning unit.
In the 16-member University of North Carolina system, however, only the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a similar center. Thus, NC State's new center would show the state's flagships taking a leadership role in promoting a diverse environment for their students, faculty and staff.
"NC State is not unlike many other college and universities across the country when it comes to dealing with issues related to the GLBT community," Hollinsghead adds. "For many years the discussion regarding sexual orientation and gender identity have been topics only discussed on the periphery of this intellectual environment we call a university. With the creation of this center and dedicated staff, NC State has achieved a huge milestone in addressing the needs of the GLBT community."
