Student affairs professionals experiences with campus racial climate at predominantly white institutions.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine Student Affairs Professionals' (SAPs') experiences with campus racial climate at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) including how SAPs make meaning of racialized incidents on campus. This study employed the multi-contextual model for diverse learning environments (MMDLE) and critical incident technique (CIT) as frameworks and used a multiple case study methodological approach analyzing 12 SAPs' experiences with campus racial climate using a constant comparative data analysis strategy. Findings from this study include how SAPs' overall experiences with campus racial climate encompass a "business as usual" mindset from campus constituents. Participants shared how the current political climate in relation to issues of race has shaped incidents on campus and dynamics regarding racialized incidents. As a result, SAPs often processed these occurrences with trusted peers and colleagues due to fear of retaliation. Participants, specifically those of Color, noted their challenges of balancing institutional racism, racial battle fatigue, and microaggressions while processing and making meaning of racialized incidents. In-depth implications and recommendations for practice are described to prepare and support SAPs in these vital roles on campus.

Race, Whiteness, and Student Life in On-Campus Housing: A Case Study of Three Universities

“…Given Jenkins's (2021) contention that Black pain and suffering are anchored in space and place, further exploration of how live-in Staff of Color navigate such spaces is especially important. This would further contribute to literature on the experiences of racially minoritized student affairs professionals (Briscoe, 2022). Additionally, we encourage scholars to consider the possibilities that may emerge when using ethnographic methods to study race in campus housing.…”

“…As such, white people occupied nearly all administrator roles across the campuses we studied. Scholarship, broadly, has also detailed how Staff of Color experience individual and institutional racism at PWIs (Bazner, 2022; Briscoe, 2022). In contrast, white staff’s and administrators’ experiences, often devoid of critical considerations of whiteness, are largely validated and normalized (Ray, 2019).…”

Returning home: Reflections on cultural capital cultivated for Black men faculty through multicultural affairs work.

“…Though the literature on Black student affairs professionals is lacking, contemporary scholarship explains that Black student affairs professionals experience various levels of discrimination (Steele, 2018), underrepresentation (Flowers, 2003; L. Gardner et al, 2014), isolation (West, 2015), and hostile work environments (Briscoe, 2022), ultimately leading to their attrition from the field (Flowers, 2004). The myriad of challenges Black people face as faculty, staff, and students in educational spaces are not monolithic but hold some similarities.…”

Embodying a praxis of care: The urgency of carework in supporting student activists

“…Institutions fail to recognize how this labor is raced, gendered, and classed (Nadesen, 2021), and also how they consistently undervalue the work itself because of its “feminine” valuation (Cardozo, 2017). Within these environments, staff of color have described similar ways carework becomes integrated and additive to their responsibilities (see Briscoe, 2021; Jones Boss et al., 2019) because they care about students. Care becomes weaponized into the expectations and demands that, “privilege the emotional relationship and obscures the inequity and exploitation that undergirds this work” (Nadesen, 2021, p. 166).…”