Cultural Center on Campus

Please visit one of the following campus centers and blog about your experience there. Post to your personal blog.

The Sonya Hanes Stone Black Cultural Center is one of the foremost cultural centers on UNC’s campus. The center was originally referred to as the Black Cultural Center upon its inception in 1988, but was renamed in 1991 to commemorate a prominent faculty member, Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone.

I visited the Sonya Hanes Stone Black Cultural Center, more commonly known to students simply as the “Stone Center,” this past Monday to get a better understanding of the center’s mission and purpose. Written on one of the walls on the bottom floor of the center was the center’s mission: To "encourage and support the critical examination of all dimensions of African-American, African and African diaspora cultures through sustained and open discussion, dialogue and debate...". I had never known the Stone Center to be a place of such cultural dialogue, as most of the time I had spent in the building previously had been for drama classes and an environmental studies recitation.

Before examining the Stone Center with a critical eye, I had never noticed that it was a center for African-American and African diaspora discussion and academic debate. In fact, it was only until I visited the center’s Web site that I realized the intense ties it holds to African culture and society. There are no tell-tale signs of African culture throughout the building and up until this Monday when I went on an assignment for this class, I had no idea that it was an academic building distinguishable from others.

To me, the center feels almost institutional in nature, with hardly any characteristics setting it apart from other buildings on campus. Perhaps that was the goal--to create a center and site for research and education—but I feel like the cultural aspect is certainly lost, the intense cultural value going unnoticed by the typical passerby.