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Top 15 of 2015: Be Good to Each Other (8)

December 23, 2015
Students check out some of the resources available at NIU's Gender and Sexuality Resource Center.

Students check out some of the material
available at NIU’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center.

Thirty-five years after the murder of John Lennon, his words are still sung by dreamers like him: “I hope someday you’ll join us,” Lennon sang, “and the world will be as one.”

NIU researchers share his yearning to “Imagine.”

Thanks to a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the next generation of graduates from NIU’s master’s-level School Psychology Program will enter the workforce better equipped to protect vulnerable students from bullying.

In the fall, NIU adopted a definition of “affirmative consent” that requires anyone attempting to initiate a sexual encounter to ask for – and receive – a clear and voluntary “yes” before beginning.

National conversation on sexual diversity and acceptance spurred by Caitlyn Jenner’s coming-out photo on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine was viewed as “a net positive” at NIU. “Caitlyn’s celebrity, and the fact that she is making this transition in such a visible way,” says Molly Holmes, director of NIU’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center, “gives us an opportunity to check in and see how accepting we are as a society and to think more critically about how we can be more supportive and better allies.”

Suzanne Degges-White, meanwhile, offered sound advice on how to keep friends when things turn sour.The chair of the NIU Department of Counseling, Adult and Higher Education published a book titled “Toxic Friendships: Knowing the Rules and Dealing with the Friends Who Break Them.”