It means 'love'

This summer, Wright State University — the other university UD shares the city of Dayton with — announced it would be closing all identity centers and diversity-related programs across campus, in compliance with Senate Bill 1 in Ohio.

The new law, passed in March, requires state institutions to dismantle existing diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure and allows the state to withhold funds from universities that do not comply.

The following Wright State centers were discontinued and their staff fired: the Asian and Native American Center, the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center, the Latino Center, the LGBTQA Center and the Women’s Center.

Before coming to UD in 2021, I worked in Wright State’s alumni relations office for six years and edited its alumni magazine. The day the centers closed, I received message after message from former colleagues devastated by the news. 

 In 2020, I wrote a feature story on the founding of WSU’s Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center — its first director being Yvonne Chappelle Seon, mother of comedian and activist Dave Chappelle, who was raised and still lives in nearby Yellow Springs — and how it had impacted students as it celebrated turning 50.

“Bolinga” means “love” in Lingala, an African language. An alumna I interviewed for that story said that upon its founding in 1971, students embraced the center as a space where they could be their true selves. “It really felt like a community,” she said.

Community. That sounds familiar.

 At UD, community isn’t just a word we throw around. It means each person here feels like this place is for them; that they belong to it, and it belongs to them. As a Catholic, Marianist university, belonging isn’t just a value — it’s a lived experience.

A central principle of Catholic Social Teaching is “belonging in community,” which emphasizes that people are inherently social and achieve their full dignity and potential through community life.

That’s what we strive to do for our students — help them feel they belong, help them know we care — despite what is happening outside the physical boundaries of our campus. UD, as a religious institution, can offer that community of belonging — one that supports students as they are — a community other universities, even those in our backyard, now may not be able to offer.

 Student organizations like Spectrum, Black Action Through Unity, Folx, Asian American Association, El Orgullo Latino, Women on Wall Street and many others foster that community. UD spaces such as the Brook Center, Women’s Center, the Global and International Affairs Center, Campus Ministry and the Multi-Ethnic Education and Engagement Center provide places where students can express themselves freely, be heard and learn to dialogue across differences.

That is our asset: the places where belonging happens. Together, we can convene and learn to have the difficult conversations others are ignoring. This is how we uphold the dignity of all people.

Bolinga means love. At UD, love means belonging — and belonging is what will sustain our community into the future.

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A version of this article appears in print in the Autumn 2025 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 68. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE