| WELCOMING DIVERSITY ON CAMPUS: THE NEED FOR TRANSFORMATION OF UNIVERSITY CULTURE
By Caroline Sotello Viernes
Turner
A working paper for the Interdisciplinary Program in Public
Policy and Minority Communities
April, 1997
Abstract
Years after the civil rights movement of the 1960s and its
call for broadening opportunities for students of color in their pursuit
of higher education, the climate of the major research universities in
the United States remains unwelcoming for persons of color. Only fundamental
transformation in academic culture can change this situation. Since the
major research universities train the faculty and set the cultural milieu
of the entire academic enterprise, and since major research universities
are the gatekeepers to the positions of influence in this society, it
is in those universities where cultural transformation must begin. Suggestions
are made for actions to effect changes at the level of deeply-held, underlying
belief systems.
“We feel that we’re a guest in someone else’s
house, that we can never relax and put our feet up on the table.”
--Ron Wakabayashi, National Director of the Japanese American Citizens
League
Years after the civil rights movement of the 1960s and its call for broadening
opportunities for students of color in their pursuit of higher education,
these students continue to experience isolation, discomfort, and high
stress in academic institutions and continue to have a very high drop-out
rate (Turner, 1994). A report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching notes that “the nation’s colleges and universities
have largely failed to provide sustained leadership in the drive for equality
of opportunity in the nation..., [and there are] alarming signals that
racial and ethnic divisions are deepening on the nation’s campuses...”
(1990, pp. 25-26).
Institutions of higher learning remain unwelcoming to persons of color.
As Daniels, elaborating on Wakabayashi’s metaphor, says, students
of color are “guests.” They’re not ‘family,’
whose foibles and mistakes are tolerated, and whose sins are forgiven.
They are ...expected...to keep out of certain rooms in the house, and
not pry into certain aspects of the family’s life. Above all, they
are to be on their best behavior at all times.” (1991, p. 5)
Students of color can have equal access to education only when they, too,
own the house, when they can rearrange the furniture and put their feet
on the coffee table like everyone else.
Among the various institutions of higher learning, the houses belonging
to the major research universities are the first that must be built anew.
Major research universities educate the faculties and set the cultural
climate for the rest of the academic enterprise (Alpert, 1985). Even more
importantly, the major research universities are the gateway to positions
of significant influence in the United States (Carnegie, 1989; Johnson,
1992; Duster, 1991). These prestigious institutions have guarded privilege
for over two centuries in the United States, and they lie on the path
required of most people who occupy powerful positions.
The current culture is unwelcoming
Currently, research universities have an unwelcoming climate for minorities.
Institutional evaluations of the success of race equity policies at four
gate keeping research university campuses1 found that they have failed
to create a welcoming climate for persons of color (Duster, 1991; McBay,
1986; Johnson, 1992; Camarillo, 1989). Research studies, including those
conducted by this author, provide evidence to support these findings (Hurtado,
1992; Green, 1989; Crossen, 1988; Turner and Thompson, 1993; Turner, 1994.)
For instance, this author found in a study of climate for persons of color
at the University of Minnesota, that minorities describe the research
university as unwelcoming, lonely, having a general lack of concern, an
expectation that students of color will not make it, inaccessible instructors,
an inadequate number of tutors, and a lack of encouragement from professors.
A Carnegie Foundation Report (1989) found that more than two-thirds of
the presidents at research and doctorate institutions said racial tensions
and hostilities are a “moderate” to “major”
problem on their campuses. The percentage of presidents reporting such
problems was much higher at the gate keeping universities than at other
institutions of higher education, where only 24 percent reported moderate
to major racial tension.
Students of color in educational institutions across the nation are regularly
defeated by this isolating and negative climate. Large research universities
have problematic records of recruitment and retention for students and
faculty of color (Turner and Thompson, 1993; Turner, 1994; Smith, 1989;
Adams, 1988; Boice, 1993a, 1993b; Exum, Menges, Watkins, et al, 1984;
Garza, 1993; Mitchell, 1982; Nakanishi, 1993; Nettles, 1990). Furthermore,
when minorities are successful, they pay a severe price for that success.
Pierce (1989) says that “each colored minority member” experiences
daily stresses as he or she negotiates existence.” (p. 296)
This is illustrated by Mitchell, who describes her academic career as
full of “contradictions and ambivalent feelings” that
were not a result of personal problems but of “being a minority
in a white-dominated society.” She explains, “My minority
student colleagues and I tried to support each other as we dealt with
the terrible bind: if I fail, the minority students fail; if I succeed,
I only highlight a general minority student failure by being an exception
and thus jeopardize my membership in minority culture.” (1982,
pp. 34-35)
Mitchell goes on to describe the price she pays for her success in academe:
“I have begun to experience feelings of anxiety and futility,
emotions that paralyze and inhibit my creativity and productivity...What
ensues is a state of double marginality...belonging to and feeling a part
of two worlds, yet never at home in either.” (pp. 38-39)
An American Indian student poignantly describes a similar pain she endures,
and her question merits a response from the academic community. “As
a person of color, you can try to survive on the streets...or you can
try to twist yourself to fit into the white man’s world. Is there
some other way for us?” (Turner, 1994)
The only way out of the double bind for persons of color is to share
in the building of the house so that they do not have to chose between
the culture of the academic community, born of the dominant white culture,
and their own culture. This involves changing more than the climate of
the university--the affective character of the university. It involves,
rather, changing the very culture itself, the university’s underlying
beliefs, values and meanings.
The process of cultural change
This change will not be an easy process, in part because it will raise
questions about closely held values and assumptions relating to the academic
enterprise. “Culture is deeply embedded and enduring,”
(Peterson and Spencer, 1990, p.6) and academic culture, particularly the
culture of major research universities, is very strong (Dill, 1982; Clark,
1983). Clark points out that “analysts of academic systems have
noted that academic sites often reek with lofty doctrines that elicit
emotion, in a secular version of religion.” (p. 74)
Furthermore, change is simply painful. It is the nature of change to
bring discomfort on many levels. Change causes people to feel incompetent
and powerless. It alters role stability and creates confusion. It generates
conflict and creates winners and losers. Finally, it creates loss of meaning
and purpose as attachments to symbols are severed (Bolman and Deal, 1991).
Still, while it will not be painless, the entire academic culture must
be transformed and deeply embedded values challenged if universities are
ever to create welcoming environments for students of color (Noel, 1990;
Smith, 1989). Such an environment cannot be created by simply adding programs.
When “new fields such as ethnic studies, where faculty members
[do] not fully subscribe to the ideology of the parent institution”
are added, the result is that “issues of quality control and
academic integrity became a continuing source of debate.” (Dill,
1982, p. 317) Newcomers who question old assumptions about an institution’s
conventions threaten established authority and they “must be
taught to see the organizational world as do their more experienced colleagues
if the traditions of the organization are to survive.” (Van
Maanen and Schein, 1979, p. 211) Faculty and staff involved in the new
fields find themselves continually struggling against marginalization.
Marginalization is perpetuated if new voices are added while the priorities
and core of the organization remain unchanged.
A truly inclusive climate can only be created when the culture in which
the faculty core resides has undergone a transformation. In a truly inclusive
university, the faculty could not do their everyday teaching and research
without being in conversation with the representatives of different cultures.
The curriculum must be “reconceived to be unimplementable without
the central participation of the currently excluded and marginalized.”
(Hill, 1991, pp. 44-45)
This does not mean the creation of a homogeneous culture, but a pluralistic
society in which all groups can maintain the integrity of their identities
while participating with equal power in the larger community. “It
will mean knowing how to be ‘different’ and feeling comfortable
about it; being able to be the ‘insider’ in one situation and
the ‘outsider’ in another... Pluralism in America can only be
achieved if everyone does some changing.” (Duster, 1991, p.54)
Most members of the higher education community, including myself, have
been educated in, and are now working within “traditional”
programs in the academy. We have been socialized into our present professions
by institutions espousing the beliefs and values of the major research
universities. Thus, creating a campus environment that increases the participation
and success of students of color will challenge all of us to be creative
and introspective when deciding what role we will play in addressing this
issue of deeply held, underlying belief systems in the university culture
at large, a culture that affects all of the higher education community.
Peterson and Spencer (1990) note that culture is changed “primarily
by cataclysmic events or through slow, intensive, and long-term efforts.”
(p. 6) If the higher education enterprise does not want to precipitate
change through cataclysm, then we must pursue fundamental change much
more avidly and intensively.
Steps toward cultural change
In designing a process for cultural change, it is important to bear in
mind the complexity of campus race relations. Tension exists not only
between racial and ethnic groups but also within these groups. As students
of color come onto campuses they feel pressure from the dominant culture
to assimilate, and often feel pressure simultaneously from others in their
racial or ethnic group to emphasize their separateness from all other
groups.2 The following solutions will assist campuses in their attempts
to address both intro- and inter-racial tensions on university campuses.
While many of these suggestions are familiar, it is helpful when examining
them to keep in mind two things. First, organizational culture, behavior
and change theory says such changes are very disruptive and often personally
painful. Second, the vision of a truly inclusive academic climate must
include space for all individuals to maintain their cultural identities
while participating fully in the institution. The task of the university
is to “provide all students with a range of safe environments
and options where they can explore and develop terms which they find comfortable
for inter-ethnic/cultural contacts.” (Duster, 1991, p.15) A
beginning list of specific actions follows.
- Emphasize cooperation, collaboration and community. (Smith, 1989)3
This is important because, as Duster notes, “Seeing others
from a distance and being seen from a distance” allows individuals
to maintain their stereotypes of each other. (1991, p.15) Two ways this
can be done are:
- Provide opportunities and incentives for diverse groups of students,
faculty, and/or staff to collaborate on various campus endeavors (teaching,
research, curriculum design, etc...)
- Build institutional rewards for promoting collaboration and community
into performance evaluations of higher education faculty and staff.
For example, single- authored and co-authored papers should be accorded
equal recognition within all departments.
- Support the process of organizational change within the university.
Bolman and Deal (1991) suggest the following measures to do this:
- Provide psychological support to those within the institution.
- Attend to realigning and renegotiating formal patterns and policies.
- Create arenas where issues can be negotiated so conflict does not
go underground.
- Recognize the need for time to let go and to experience symbolic healing.
- Act decisively against racial intolerance on campus. Policies clarifying
acceptable and unacceptable conduct on campus should become an integral
part of the campus code of conduct (Southern Regional Education Board,
1990).4
- Establish a comprehensive, systematic approach to providing supportive
services to all students and staff without the stigma that is presently
attached to them. Talented students who do not need remedial support
still need other kinds of support and must not be left to “flounder
and struggle” (Smith, 1989, p. 47) on their own.
- Increase diversity among faculty and staff. In addition to hiring
more faculty and staff of color, grants should be made available to
colleges for appointments of visiting faculty of color. (Johnson, 1992)
- Incorporate into the curriculum contributions by people of color.
- Broaden curriculum to include heritage and traditions of many racial
and ethnic groups so that racial and cultural understanding is built
educationally as well as socially. Thus ethnic and women’s studies
should be integrated into all department curriculums.
- Train staff to respond to changing populations and more varied needs,
and develop programs that raise the multi-cultural sensitivity of all
participants in campus life. Policy makers from various levels (federal,
state local community, and campus) must be involved as designers and
participants in such efforts to break down deeply embedded racial/ethnic
myths and stereotypes.
- Create positive classroom environments that promote mutual respect
among students.
- Increase cross-cultural interaction within classrooms through the
use of small group discussions.
- Create forums where homogeneous student groups can reach out to each
other. For example, universities should provide incentives for student
leaders of campus organizations to spend time together, to work together
in defining the larger purposes of the institution.
- Conduct a detailed study of one’s own college and university,
followed by periodic examination. Data show problems vary from campus
to campus and each institution must adapt solutions that are institutionally
specific.5
Encourage the students themselves to define what is welcoming for them.
They must enter university home as owners rather than guests and move
the furniture around so it accommodates the entire student body.6
Conclusion
Institutions must seize opportunities that diversity brings to re-examine
missions and values. Although strong institutional statements in support
of diversity by faculty and administrative leaders are helpful, strong
actions that change the “way things are usually done around here”
will do more than strong statements to nurture an open and inclusive climate.
An inclusiveness is needed that means more than “come on in,
but don’t change anything.” Martha (Minnow in Carnegie
Foundation, 1991, p. 35)
While measures developed to improve campus climate are essential for
minority students, they will benefit all students. Both minority and majority
students will be better served when colleges help students feel a sense
of inclusion and belonging in the academic community. As Style (cited
in Brewer, 1990) so eloquently states:
“Schools should provide all students with both mirrors and
windows. Windows provide new perspectives; they encourage students to
look beyond their existing views. But mirrors are also essential. They
allow us to see ourselves and our own culture through role models and
culturally connected materials and experiences. The problem with our current
educational system is that too many students of color have many windows
but not enough mirrors, while white students have too many mirrors on
the dominant culture but not enough windows into different perspectives.”
(p. 4)
An attitude exists that changes which promote diversity are equivalent
to reducing quality. On the contrary, these changes will actually improve
the “quality of education experiences for minority and majority
students.” (Southern Regional Educational Board, 1990, p. 34)
Many in the academic community will welcome the dialogue needed for the
transformation of our educational institutions as progress or a form of
rebirth; others who have invested much of their lives in building the
institution will experience the radical change as a kind of death and
a great loss. In light of Van Maanen and Schein’s and Bolman and
Deal’s description of organizational change, both responses are understandable.
Nevertheless, there must be a resolution to these differences in order
for education to meet the fast-changing needs of our society.
Notes
- The major research universities, classified as Research University
I institutions by the Carnegie Foundation (1989, p.139), are those that
offer a full range of baccalaureate programs, are committed to graduate
education through the doctorate degree, give high priority to research,
receive annually at least $33.5 million in federal support, and award
at least 50 Ph.D. degrees a year.
- See the Carnegie Report (1989) and the University of California at
Berkeley Diversity Project Report (Duster, 1991) for documentation and
further discussion of intra-racial tensions found on college campuses.
- This step in particular may challenge the traditional mission and
values of higher education, where competition and individualism are
entrenched values. Yet it is an important step, for we may have “gone
too far in encouraging competitive and highly individualistic practices
at the expense of concern for the community and at the expense of good
learning.” (Smith, 1989, p. 58)
- stablishing these policies must be done with great care. See Olivas
(1992) for documentation and discussion of the legal complexities of
trying to formally regulate conduct on campus.
- For a list of questions and suggestions that will help institutions
individualize their course of action, see Southern Regional Education
Board (1990), Green (1989) and Smith (1989).
- It is important to keep in mind here that the ultimate responsibility
for the transformation rests on the racial majority. As Wilson (1992)
states: “Ultimately it is the racial majority that must take responsibility
for its own ethical transformation. Minorities can help, but the burden
of changing white racial attitudes ultimately belongs to the white community,
in academia and elsewhere.” (p. 83)
Bibliography
Adams, Howard G. “Tomorrow’s Professorate : Insuring Minority
Participation through Talent Development Today.” Engineering Dean’s
Council Student Pipeline Workshop, American Society for Engineering Education.
Washington, D.C. 7 Jan. 1988. Microfiche.: U.S. Department of Education,
Educational Resources Information Center, 9 Jan. 1988. ED 2991278:
Alpert, Daniel. “Performance and Paralysis: The Organizational
Context of the American Research University.” Journal of Higher Education
56, no. 3 (May/June, 1985): 241- 281.
Boice, Robert. “Early Turning Points in Professional Careers of
Women and Minorities.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning 53
(Mar. 1993): 71-79.
-------. New Faculty Involvement for Women and Minorities.” Research
in Higher Education 34, no. 3 (1993): 291-341.
Bolman, Lee G. and Deal, Terrence E. Reframing Organizations: Artistry,
Choice and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1991.
Brewer, Carolyn. Minority Student Success in College: What Works? Olympia,
Washington: The Evergreen State College, Washington Center for Improving
the Quality of Undergraduate Education, Spring, 1990.
Camarillo, Albert M. Building a Multiracial, Multicultural University
Community: Final Report of the University Committee on Minority Issues.
Leland Stanford Junior University. California: March, 1989.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Campus Life:
In Search of Community. Lawrenceville, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1991.
Clark, Burton R. The Higher Education System: Academic Organization
in Cross-national Perspective. Berkeley: University Press, 1983.
Crosson, Patricia H. “Four-year College and University Environments
for Minority Degree Achievement.” The Review of Higher Education
11, no. 4 (Summer, 1988): 365-382.
Daniels, Lee A. “Only the appearance of diversity: Higher education
and the pluralist ideal in the 1980s and the 1990s.” Policy Perspectives.
Philadelphia: The Pew Higher Education Research Program, 1991.
Dill, David D. “The Management of Academic Culture: Notes on the
Management of Meaning and Social Integration.” Higher Education 11
(1982): 303-320.
Duster, Troy. The Diversity Project: Final Report. Institute for Social
Change: University of California, Berkeley. California: November, 1991.
Exum, William H., Robert J. Menges, Bari Watkins, et al. “Making
It at the Top: Women and Minority Faculty in the Academic labor Market.”
American Behavioral Scientist 27, no.3 (Jan. 1984): 301-324.
Garza, Hisauro. “Second-Class Academics: Chicano/Latino Faculty
in U.S. Universities.” New Directions for Institutional Learning
53 (Mar. 1993): 33-41.
Green, Madeleine F. Minorities on Campus: A Handbook for Enhancing Diversity.
Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1989.
Hill, Patrick J. “Multi-culturalism: The Crucial Philosophical
and Organizational Issues.” Change 23, no. 4 (July/August, 1991):
38-47.
Hurtado, Sylvia. “The Campus Racial Climate: Contexts of Conflict.”
Journal of Higher Education 63, no.5 (September/October, 1992): 539-569.
Johnson, Josie. All University Forum on Diversity Report on the Self-Reflective
Study: Attending to Human Details. University of Minnesota. Minneapolis,
Minnesota: May, 1992.
McBay, Shirley M. The Racial Climate on the MIT Campus: A Report of
the Minority Student Issues Group. Office of the President: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Boston, Massachusetts: September, 1986.
Mitchell, Jacquelyn. “Reflections of a Black Social Scientist:
Some Struggles, Some Doubts, Some Hopes.” Harvard Educational Review
52, no. 1 (February, 1982): 27-44.
Nakanishi, Don T. “Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education:
Faculty and Administrative Representation and Tenure.” New Directions
for Teaching and Learning 53 (Mar. 1993): 51-59.
Nettles, Michael T. “Success in Doctoral Programs: Experiences
of Minority and White Students.” American Journal of Education 98,
no. 4 (Aug. 1990): 494-522.
Noel, Lee. “Leadership and Values: Retention Secrets?” Recruitment
and Retention in Higher Education 4 (December, 1990): 6-7.
Olivas, Michael A. “The Political Economy of Immigration, Intellectual
Property, and Racial Harassment: Case Studies of the Implementation of
Legal Change on Campus.” Journal of Higher Education 63, no. 5 (September/October,
1992): 570-598.
Peterson, Marvin W. and Melinda G. Spencer. “Understanding Academic
Culture and Climate.” New Directions for Institutional Research:
Assessing Academic Climates and Cultures. Ed. William G. Tierney. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Pierce, Chester M. “Unity in Diversity: Thirty-three Years of Stress.”
Black Students: Psychosocial Issues and Academic Achievement, edited by
Gordon LaVern Berry and Joy Keiko Asamen. Newbury Park: Sage Publications,
1989.
Smith, Daryl G. The Challenge of Diversity: Involvement or Alienation
in the Academy? ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 4. Washington, D.C.:
School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University,
1989.
Southern Regional Education Board. Black and White Students’ Perceptions
of Their College Campuses. Atlanta, Georgia: 1990.
Turner, Caroline Sotello Viernes and Judith Rann Thompson. “Socializing
Women Doctoral Students: Minority and Majority Experiences.” The
Review of Higher Education 16, no. 3 (Spring, 1993): 355-370.
Turner, Caroline Sotello Viernes. “A Guest in Someone Else’s
House: Students of Color on Campus.” The Review of Higher Education
17, no. 4 (Summer, 1994): 355-370.
Van Maanen, John & Schein, Edgar H. “Toward a Theory of Organizational
Socialization.” Research in Organizational Behavior, edited by Barry
M. Staw. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1979.
Wilson, Reginald. Book Review of Fostering Minority Access and Achievement
in Higher Education by Richard C Richardson, Jr. and Louis W. Bender.
Harvard Educational Review 62, no. 1 (Spring, 1992): 79-87.
|
