Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, one of the largest clubs on campus, is also one of the most silent yet energetic clubs you can find at NJIT. They came out in full force at XLG, and that energy showed how united Intervarsity is. It’s something that I’ve seen from a lot of the religious organizations in events like the Muslim Students Association and the Hindu holiday, Holi. However, last Friday was a time to celebrate unity with Intervarsity, a club some of us know for their yearly Brick City Basketball tournament they hold.
XLG, or what is called the “Extra Large Group” event of Intervarsity, is a once-a-semester event bringing students from a lot of other universities, like William Patterson University and Bloomfield College. Getting a chance to talk to current NJIT Intervarsity president, William Heberling, I was able to find out that the XLG for the Fall 2014 semester was one of the biggest he has seen. Former NJIT Intervarsity president, Anna Srigiri stated: “XLG blew my expectations, l did not expect over a hundred NJIT students.”
There was a distinct energy amongst the crowd. From the praise songs to the deeply passionate preaching, people were visibly stricken to take part in all of the happenings of the event. It was a major consensus amongst students who took part like Frank Barcelos from Rutgers Newark, that the XLG held in the NJIT Atrium was one of the best XLG’s they have been to. During the event I clearly remember not being able to hear myself because of the visible passion that was emanating from the crowd. In a lot of ways, I kind of hope that more events like this semester’s XLG could happen.
NJIT is filled with hundreds of different kinds of people. From Muslim to Catholic to Atheist, it takes all kinds to build the melting pot of diversity that only NJIT can make possible. As I’ve said before, a lot of events on campus help build connections between students, but why can’t we have more of these types of events? Not just inter-school events but county-wide events? Intervarsity has shown to me how awesome having people, from schools across the state like Drew and Rutgers New Brunswick, come to our campus can be. This showed that it only takes a single stone, a single brick, or even a single lego to start.
The Intervarsity XLG theme, this semester, was “Let’s Build”. To build means to create a connection of some sort. XLG established ways Christians can build a community of faith. How about we try to create that bigger community? Intervarsity proved what can happen when people are brought together for a single cause. It only takes a single student, a single sentence, or an event. I consider the NJIT community pretty strong. However, we can make it stronger, more cohesive and close through events like XLG that bring us all together.
Matthew Maravilla
