Written By: Abdul
Footage Shot By: Rubina
Edited and revised By: Lindsey
Logan spends a lot of time in the MCC. It’s one of the few places in which they feel safe and free to express themself without being judged.
At each and every moment, you can hear movement, voices, music somehow quiet and at the same time maddeningly pervasive—never a silent moment. Doors open and close with a constant stream of clicks, latches opening and closing, handles turning round and swinging back. Near the entrance that looks out on High Street, to the right of the entrance as you approach, is a patch of crimson wall, striking against the grey-white tones that surround it and grace the rest of the Union. Above the wall, in large slate-grey letters, is the name of the room: “The Multicutural Center.”
In the middle of the crimson stretch of wall are two doors, light brown wood patterned with arcs and stretched of slightly darker brown, and three glass panes running down. To the right of the doors is a 32-inch TV with two lights on either side. Announcements cycle through the TV, all of them dealing with events organized by the Multicultural Center. “Social Justice Engagement,” “Open-Doors Anti-Bias Campaign,” “DICE: Diversity, Intercultural & Community Engagement certificate,” and more. There’s a little wooden table and two grey-cushioned chairs underneath the TV. To the left of the door is a plaque hanging off of a grey buckeye leaf; on the plaque is the name of the room, in case you missed the giant letters above the door.
As one enters everything seems to be muted at once. No music, peace and quiet. The floor is carpeted—a coarse, close-cropped affair, muted reds and browns and blues and so on—but after that part of the ground is dark linoleum, segmented. The carpet curves to the right, past a reception desk and toward a single door that is propped open and leads into offices. Directly in front of the main doors is a frosted pane of glass that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. On top of it the folks of the MCC ask, “What’s your story?” On the frosted glass someone replies in expo marker, “Aug. 20th: Cavs vs. Bulls.”
Below the frosted pane is a box for Ebola donations, with an outline of Africa on the side. Beyond it is a seating area with a few sofas and a TV turned to CNN, which is covering the first case of Ebola in the US.
As I enter a student worker—a man in his early 20s, with dreadlocks that reach to his upper back—is talking to a lady in a red outfit—red skirt and red jacket. The lady is bent over a table and cutting up pieces of cloth with a scissors, laughing.
“I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing, right?”
He nods and laughs, too.
She explains that she’s cutting the cloth into circles to put under the potted plants, so that the trays they are on don’t scratch the tables. She asks him to help her and lift up the tray so she can put the circles underneath, and he misunderstands and lifts only the pots themselves, so she has to lift them up herself. She grumbles a bit about it, but good-naturedly. When she’s done she goes into the offices and the student-worker goes to the reception desk and starts tapping away at the keyboard in front of him.
On the left-hand wall a white wall-paper has been put up, with all sorts of terms one would associate with a multicultural center printed on. Words like indigenous, religion, Latino, age, East Asian, transgender, pansexual, interfaith, military, biracial, and more. All the terms surround The Ohio State University, in font larger than the rest.
The floor tasted odd, a mixture of shoes and Lysol….just kidding. Couldn’t taste anything. There was a faint smell of Lysol, though. A janitor walked in while I was there.
Here is the video pertaining to our location and community, ENJOY!