College official wants dorm exclusively for ‘women of color’
North Carolina State University’s new director of multicultural student affairs is proposing a “living and learning village for women of color on campus,” the school said in a news release Tuesday.
“The point and purpose is if you are a Latina and you are an engineering major, with a very specific specialization, you may not ever see anybody who looks like you,” Nashia Whittenburg said. “But when you come home, here is your opportunity to get some support and to deal with some of the microaggressions you might have had to deal with throughout your entire day when you’ve been at class.”
There are 16 villages on campus, the release said — such as the Black Male Initiative and Women of Welch — designed for “students with special interests or of particular demographics.” Whittenburg intends to submit a proposal to the school’s housing office by February “to see if a village specifically for women of color is feasible for 2018.”
The Multicultural Student Affairs office “looks for ways to educate about and represent various cultures within the student body” and “also tries to retain underrepresented students and help them graduate,” the release noted. Both goals are part of Whittenburg’s intention for a dorm exclusively for women of color.
Whittenburg, who became director July 10, also wants to launch a month of Gaelic heritage celebrations in March.
“It’s just an exciting time,” she said of multiculturalism at N.C. State. “You can feel it in the air.”
The idea of college dormitories for particular demographic groups is advancing elsewhere as well.
The University of Connecticut in January 2016 announced plans to construct a dorm for black men only. The University of Colorado at Boulder in May heralded the transformation of a dormitory into a “social justice living environment.”
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