During the 2017-18 academic year, the Pride Village Exploration Task Force was created by the Department of Diversity Outreach of Student Government.
The task force was started with the intention of creating a village for primarily first-year students who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, themed around LGBTQ+ history, culture and art.
Ryan Levine, a fourth-year studying fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology, is the former president of the GLBT Community Alliance, and currently serves as the leader of the Pride Village Exploration Task Force. According to Levine, the task force hopes to provide a safe space for exploration of identity.
“We seek to provide a space for exploration in that, because it’s not covered within the normal curriculum of NC State,” Levine said. “We also seek to provide a safer space for exploration of identity and for shared experiences of LGBT students.”
One of the leaders of the Diversity Outreach Department in Student Government, Sam Chan, a third-year studying political science and communication, said that the task force is an important part of the executive branch’s initiatives.
“So, when looking at the goals of the Diversity Outreach Department for the year, [student body president and vice president] Jess and Meredith’s platform included talking with the Pride Village Exploration Task Force,” Chan said. “[I] got to talking with [Levine] about how Student Government can support, what we can do on our side and just what can we do to support them as much as they need.”
Although the task force was created within Student Government, Levine said that it has grown to include representatives from the GLBT Community Alliance and is largely a student initiative in its current stages.
“It’s largely student initiative, but we have worked with a lot of university partners and talked to them,” Levine said. “We were created by SG, and SG is supportive. The GLBT Community Alliance has been extremely supportive of this, and we’ve kept them up to date on it and we’ve also recruited several people from them.”
Due to the first-year live-on requirement, the village would be geared toward primarily first-year students. According to Levine, this first-year oriented model veers away from the original model from when villages were first created, and instead works better in helping LGBTQ+ students transition into college life.
“In the days when the villages were first created in the early 2000s, villages were more geared at retention in the village,” Levine said. “For us, a lot of the themes that we’re working off are more connecting students in their first year. We’re not creating students, obviously; there are thousands of LGBT students at this school, so we would just be finding a placement for them within this university.”
Chan said that over the course of its existence, the task force has focused a lot on gathering research and working with other schools to find a model that will fit at NC State.
“In my most recent meetings with [Levine], there’s been a lot of talk about doing more research, reaching out to other schools,” Chan said. “[Levine] has been working with University Housing to talk about the plans, so [they’re] definitely farther along than they’ve been and making lots of progress.”
Levine said that the Village Task Force hopes to have a proposal ready for University Housing by the spring semester. At this point, however, Levine said that any support from students is welcome for the task force.
“We’re looking for any support we can get,” Levine said. “…whether that be people actually working on it, or people sharing their experiences in regards to being an LGBT student; whether that be RA interactions, or roommate interactions. All of those kinds of things play into how we create this village, and we’re still early enough in the process that we’d love to have input from students.”
