With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, it’s important that students know the resources available to them on campus, as well as the events going on around campus that pertain to sexual health and well-being. Both the GLBT Center and Women’s Center offer services to students, and there are plenty of others around campus.
GLBT Center
Open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every Monday through Friday in Talley Student Union
One of the most important spaces for students to have on hand is the GLBT Center, located on the fifth floor of Talley in room 5230. The GLBT Center offers a space for all students to relax, do homework, check out books and obtain safe-sex supplies.
“One of the awesome things about the GLBT Center is that we have the widest range of safer sex supplies on campus,” said Andy DeRoin, the assistant director of the GLBT Center. “That includes external condoms with latex, external condoms without latex, internal condoms that are never made with latex and gloves, dental dams, which … I don’t know if a lot of people were ever taught about dental dams — I didn’t know about it until college for sure — it’s basically a piece of non-latex material you can use to cover an area, oftentimes for oral stimulation.”
According to DeRoin, the GLBT Center also offers gloves for manual stimulation, which can be used if a partner has a cut on their hand that they don’t wish to get infected. The GLBT Center also offers a wide variety of lubes for students to take, depending on the student’s preference for taste or composition.
Another facet of the GLBT Center is the library where students can check out books on sexual health, identity and relationships. According to DeRoin, students can come in and check out books during regular business hours of the GLBT Center Monday through Friday of each week.
“We have expanded our library to include a book on almost every single intersection of identity,” DeRoin said. “So there’s something in there basically for everyone, at least around gender and sexuality. And the cool thing about that is that you can have some books that are a little bit more on the ‘how-to’ side of relationships and so we’ve got some really cool things that really talk about healthy lesbian relationships and just healthy sexuality and communication and physical and non-physical relationships. We’ve got books about how to have romantic relationships that don’t involve sex.”
Student advocate program: Consent in daily life
Feb. 14, 4 p.m., Talley Student Union
This workshop, hosted by the GLBT Center, will focus on daily interactions in and out of sexual situations, as well as interactions that relate to consent. The program will teach students how to define consent and the importance of knowing when consent is given. Students can register for this event on the GLBT Center’s website.
“The whole point is to think about consent outside of sexual relationships,” DeRoin said. “Because that’s most of the narrative that we’re taught. And so what does consent look like in friendships? Or budding romantic relationships? All those things are important to consider. … Folks can just stop in or they can register for it in REPORTER.”
Students can contact the GLBT Center at [email protected] and visit its website at https://diversity.ncsu.edu/glbt/, where students can learn more about and register for select events.
Women’s Center
Open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every Monday through Friday in Talley Student Union
The Women’s Center at NC State, located on the fifth floor of Talley in room 5210, is another important space for students to have access to. Every professional member of the Women’s Center is trained to help with crisis management. According to the organization’s website, the Women’s Center can offer support in person or remotely.
The Movement Peer Educators
One of the key facets of the Women’s Center is The Movement, a peer educator group that organizes workshops throughout the year, as well as education around consent. The Movement is open to any students who are interested in applying.
Michelle Burden, a fourth-year studying psychology, is the director of events for The Movement and is helping organize the center’s Valentine’s Day events.
“We’re a club, but you can also have some paid positions in it if you apply,” Burden said. “Our leadership team is all seniors right now, so we’ll all be graduating, so we need some new people to fill in those positions. Basically, you can apply to join and then you have to go through trainings because obviously, it’s very sensitive stuff. But the trainings are super easy, super fun and after that, you’re done.”
Some of The Movement’s workshops include Consent 101 and Healthy Relationships 101, the latter of which is set for March 3. The Movement also will teach students about Title IX tentatively set for April, and Burden is working on a workshop for survivors of color, set for March 9.
Candy, Condoms and Consent
Feb. 14, 10 a.m., Talley Student Union
On Valentine’s Day, The Movement will host Candy, Condoms and Consent, where students can learn about the importance of consent, get free candy and play games. According to Burden and The Movement’s website, students can also request information about on- or off-campus resources available to survivors.
“Basically we’ll just have some tables set up in the Talley lobby area and people can come up and learn about The Movement,” Burden said. “They can grab some safe-sex supplies; we’ve got like dental dams, condoms, latex-free condoms, female condoms and lube. We also have candy, and we have a wheel they can spin and they can choose a number off of it, which correlates to a sheet we have, and they can play some consent trivia. It’s just an opportunity for students to learn about consent and get some safe-sex supplies that they can use at their leisure.”
According to Burden, Candy, Condoms and Consent also happens in the fall semester, around Halloween.
Students can visit the Women’s Center’s website at https://diversity.ncsu.edu/womens-center/, where students can learn more about and register for select events.
Other resources
The Student Health Center provides a bevy of resources to students outside of routine checkups and doctor appointments. For starters, Student Health offers gynecology services for students in need of routine gynecological care, as well as pregnancy testing, contraceptives and emergency contraception.
Student Health also offers express sexually transmitted infection (STI) screenings as part of its primary care services. STI testing at Student Health consists of gonorrhea at all sites of sex and chlamydia, as well as blood tests for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis. According to Student Health’s website, patients wanting to get tested must not have any symptoms of an STI, must not have been exposed to anyone with an STI and not be recent survivors of sexual assault (within the last three months).
According to Student Health’s website, students that wish to partake in express screenings can log into the HealthyPack Portal, go to the forms tab and complete the STI Express Questionnaire.
Another important resource for students to learn is the various hotlines available. For survivors of sexual violence, dating violence, stalking or other gender-based violence, the sexual assault phone line is available 24/7, 365 days a year. You can reach the sexual assault phone line at 919-515-4444.
NC State’s Counseling Center can be reached at 919-515-2423 all hours of the day and can offer individual or group sessions to aid survivors. InterAct is located near campus and is a 24-hour support line that can include short-term counseling, support groups and more to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
The Solace Center, located at InterAct of Wake County on 1012 Oberlin Road, is a specialty site that offers forensic kits for survivors of sexual assault. The Solace Center offers evidence for police to begin their investigation if the survivor so chooses.
The National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 800-656-4673.
NC State offers even more services and facilities for survivors of gender-based violence and sexual assault. More details about the aforementioned services, as well as many others, can be found at https://protectthepack.dasa.ncsu.edu/sexual-assault/.
