Thanks, Luke! Between regular employment and freelance work, I volunteer -- for my self-interest, of course... I serve as the secretary of my local coin club. I mentioned my state guard service. I just signed on a project to help rebrand a local food bank.

Here in Austin, we have a fairly mature NFP support community, as you can imagine. On my team, we have a Project Manager (certified PMP), a web-designer, a customer liaison (sales contact), and me (content developer). We work for an agency called "Leap to Success" which finds these projects. The two-fold benefit is first, it gets things done for the NFPs, and, for us, it fills in the resume with projects between jobs. Rebranding an organization would be a new achievement for me.

Also, Laurel and I are members of the Wheatsville Food Co-op here, as we always have been co-op members wherever we lived. There's a lot of communism in the culture, for sure, but, I run into the occasional libertarian who responds to "We Own It".  They always have food donation boxes at the door.

Now, I have to think about this... 

NFP = Not for Profit. That's what we were discussing, and among them, it is a common TLA (three-letter acronym). But, I apologize. Friday, I assured a Fortune 100 company that I always write with the ultimate reader in mind.  "Always" is such a hard word to live up to. 

A recent thread on transgenderism made me think of the significantly disproportionate number of LGBTQ students at NCSSM.  Many such students apply to NCSSM to escape the stiflingly intolerant atmospheres at most normal high schools in North Carolina.  I was rather shocked at how many of my classmates came out during and after my years at NCSSM.

Anyone who applies to NCSSM needs to keep this in mind as the condition relates to the applicant's own personal comfort level around such people.  How much of your spiritual power will be consumed to accommodate the company of people so different from yourself?  Only you can decide.

Do you wish to share a dormitory room, locker room, or restroom with a transgender person like Jazz Jennings when at least one notable psychiatrist has argued that such a persuasion is in fact a mental disorder?

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 10/10, 1:50pm)

In an environment that already makes so many demands on a person's psyche, throwing transgenderism as another load on a person's psychological ship could be enough to sink it, at least for some.  As I mentioned in the original article on NCSSM, I knew of at least two suicide attempts during my two years there.  For those of us raised in a very traditional, old school, religious way, and who never knowingly signed for these unexpected burdens challenging our core beliefs ... well ... some of us will just have to disagree with the "package deal" of having to cope with these extra, unannounced, disagreeable burdens.

Even now as an atheist I would find having to share a room with a girl who "thinks" she is a boy -- or a boy who "thinks" he is a girl -- profoundly disturbing.  I am told the current roommate matching process has greatly improved over the years.  Typically an LGBTQ enrollee will self-identify on the roommate questionnaire and the matchers will attempt to match such an enrollee with another enrollee who checks the right "comfort level" box on the questionnaire.  Staff have told me that numerous LGBTQ enrollees have not "come out" to their families and so the questionnaire is treated as privileged information not readily available to their parents.

My junior year roommate and I fought so much about nonsense that I tried hard to select a viable roommate my senior year.  So I named the incoming junior from my old high school as my preference.  Unfortunately, after his mother cried twice about her boy leaving home so young, he changed his mind and stayed home.  So I got the senior no one else wanted, a boy who apparently suffered ablutophobia or fear of bathing.  Phew!  Luckily he stayed out of the room most of the time to engage in Dungeons & Dragons with his pals and left me in peace, but his odor lingered.  I learned always, always, always to try very aggressively to select decent roommates in college.  That had mostly good results.

Experiences like these lead me to encourage any students who have viable opportunities on the home front to live with their parents while attending high school and college for as long as possible.  All this crap about "growth opportunities" offered by dealing with the aforementioned situations is exactly that -- crap.  I attended college to place those credits on that transcript toward that degree in service to that career ... period.  Anything that enhances that purpose is good.  Anything that inhibits it is bad.  Dealing with LGBTQ issues inhibits rather than enhances that purpose and so is bad ... period.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 10/10, 3:39pm)

Once again, Steve, we will just have to agree to disagree.  I have strong preferences about the people with whom I must share close living quarters.  As the saying goes, "The more people are like each other, the more they will like each other; the more people are not like each other, the more they will not like each other."  Trying to rationalize this away leads to disaster.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 10/10, 5:14pm)

But Somebody Obviously Did Ask for This Western Campus

At that comment link, I observe, in part:

As a side note, private conversations with various students over many years have revealed that, yes, some candidates decided not to attend or even apply because of the long distance from home. Others who did apply and gained entry did so to “escape toxic home environments” rather than because of the academic opportunities. Furthermore, most NCSSM students at the campus never get to take advantage of the research and other advanced opportunities that ultimately benefit only a small cadre of highly favored “top performers” at NCSSM. Most students will attest that the main benefits of NCSSM are freedom, friendship, challenge, and, yes, escape from toxic home environments. The western campus can deliver those same benefits. Consequently, that the western campus will have fewer research opportunities should not deter its establishment.