The walls of the building at 1936 Sheridan Road are now as colorful as the faces of the students who gather within them.
Hispanic/Latino Student Services’ corridors are a rosy red. Asian and Asian-American Student Services’ walls are purple. A meeting room is lime green.
“It adds a little life to the building,” said Mary Desler, associate vice president for student affairs. “How can you have a Multicultural Center and have all the walls be white?”
As Desler led tours of Northwestern’s Multicultural Center on Wednesday at the MCC’s open house, at least 30 administrators, students and faculty were among the first to see MCC’s new look.
The center expanded over the summer to the second and third floors of the building, having previously been on just the basement and first floor.
“The basement was not very conducive to building a community,” said Tedd Vanadilok, a graduate assistant who helps coordinate MCC programming. “It wasn’t very inviting — it looked more like it was used for storage.”
The basement also was too small for the many cultural groups, Vanadilok said.
So when the Academic Advising Center and the Office of Fellowships moved to 1940 Sheridan Road over the summer, the MCC got more room to provide programming for the 34 student groups it houses.
“I love it,” said Lupita Temiquel, coordinator of Hispanic/Latino Student Services. “It feels like a true center. I’ve already seen a difference. People are coming between classes and killing time. There’s definitely a lot of traffic now.”
The increase in traffic is owed to MCC’s new and improved facilities, Temiquel said. The center now has a library room adorned with instruments of different cultures. Copies of ethnic magazines, such as Ebony, are on a rack.
Four major cultural organizations — Muslim-cultural Students Association, South Asian Student Association, Asian Pacific-American Coalition and Latino cultural group Alianza — have their own student offices. There also is a meditation room, primarily for Muslims and Sikh students’ prayer sessions, a TV lounge, a computer room and a resource room with scholarship information for people of color.
The expanded center also features open spaces where student groups can hold meetings. More space means more programming, Desler said.
She currently is coordinating a dessert and dialogue between students and faculty about cultural issues and skill-building sessions for students to learn how to be “inter-cultural” in the workplace.
Karla Diaz, president of Alianza, said she is happy to see the crowded days of holding meetings in the houses’ basement end. But she said she is happier that NU is taking student diversity more seriously.
“It’s wonderful that this is something that the university made a priority,” said Diaz, a Weinberg junior. “It’s been so uplifting and tremendously motivating as a student group leader.”
