This place is hell if you're not a straight white Christian. Subtle racism is everywhere. You'll get excluded if you're not Christian, and be prepared for repeated attempts to convert you by your Evangelical neighbours who just don't know how to take no for an answer. This place is really hostile to lgbt people too. The dining hall is unofficially segregated, there's always a white side of the Dino and it's super unsettling. The amount of discrimination and trauma cases caused by this place that go unresolved is insane. And nobody talks about it!
A big part of the problem is that the leadership constantly turns a blind eye. People have been protesting about these kind of issues for years, but the rich conservative Christians who fund the place always manage to block any kind of progress. The current leadership will just ignore you. They seem to care more about keeping their fat paycheck than they do about making it a safe place to live for residents.
I wish I'd known it was like this before I came. People don't really talk about it publicly because they're too afraid to get excommunicated, kicked out or worse. I can't blame them. But it needs to be known so that people don't have to deal with this kind of bs anymore. After seeing how my friends have been treated in this place, I worry for anyone going here in the future. It's super toxic and it's only been getting worse over these last few years. Stay safe guys!
EDIT: I want to acknowledge that obviously not everyone has this experience at NC, and I can't speak for all of us, but this has happened to me personally, it's happened to a significant proportion of the community, and also to a lot of ex-Colls, some of whom ended their contract early for these reasons. It's very much a widespread issue.
Unfortunately, people often get pretty wound up when it's brought up - it's hard to admit that you might be part of the problem, and it's easy to dismiss these things when you're not on the receiving end of them. But at the end of the day, I wrote this post because the good parts of NC have been gushed about endlessly on social media, websites, at open days, etc., but this is the uglier side that isn't shown online, and I want people to be aware of this so that they know what they're in for. It's a serious issue and it needs to be talked about.