Abstract:
This study focuses on how admissions at selective colleges and universities represent key racialized organizations. We analyzed data from 50 individual interviews of admissions professionals, through a theory of racialized organizations to recognize admissions as practices that consistently reproduces systemic inequities. We reveal how organizational structures centering an array of institutional priorities can maintain the systemic reproduction of intersectional racial inequalities, by privileging priorities like budgetary constraints, geographic diversity, and other interests, minimizing racial diversity as a priority. Our study bears key implications for future research and practice, by demonstrating that much like a Möbius strip, admissions organizations are difficult to fundamentally change for diversity and equity goals. Even with seemingly dramatic alterations to practices (e.g. test-optional policies) in isolation, Möbius strips generally maintain their structure. Institutional priorities, especially fiscal priorities, maintain the durability in racially unequal admissions outcomes through logics of racial capitalism. Unless institutional priorities fundamentally change, admissions processes will likely continue to reproduce inequalities. Research and systemic change efforts in college admissions should go beyond focusing on isolated elements (e.g. test requirements) and approaches to admissions (e.g. percent plans) to confront admissions and enrollment management systems, by interrogating underlying institutional logics and routines.
Abstract:
In the memoir, Unforgetting, author Roberto Lovato begins with a story about his meeting with a Salvadoran woman, Elena, and her son, David, at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre in Karnes City, TX. Elena’s request that he report on the detained mothers’ organizing from within the detention centre sets Lovato on a journey to search for the root causes that have created a cyclical experience for Salvadoran refugees fleeing violence. In his quest, Lovato does the difficult work of uncovering layers of a shared history with a nation and his ancestors. Unforgetting is an urgently important testimonio of El Salvador’s challenging history of war, gangs, death, and the families that continue to fight to live, through his eyes as a Salvadoreño.
Abstract:
Because the work of scholars and student affairs practitioners is primarily confined within colonial institutions of higher education, their ethics of research and practice are also primarily bound by the same colonial perspective. Colonial practices perpetuate white dominance and therefore harm students, specifically those from marginalized communities in higher education. In this article, we draw from an anti-colonial perspective to complicate these ethics of research and practice. In this way, we intend to shine a light on and challenge the replication of colonialism in research relationships between researchers and practitioners. Utilizing duoethnography, we engaged an epistemology of theory in the flesh to interrogate and unpack the notion of ethics from our lived experiences. We examined ethics in research practice and ethics in student affairs practice. Through these domains, we explored who ethics were made for, in what ways ethics are a form of social control, and the role whiteness plays in how ethical decisions are employed. We conclude with an anti-colonial manifesto urging higher education scholars and practitioners to consider questions, challenges, and tensions for ethics.
Purpose:
The public debate over affirmative action in college admissions tends to focus on questions such as:
What is affirmative action in selective college admissions?
Is race-conscious affirmative action an effective means to achieve racial equity in higher education?
What are its goals and purposes?
How is it practiced by college admissions offices?
Are race-conscious/race-sensitive admissions practices fair?
We present this information in the form of a syllabus (and accompanying microsite) because a syllabus is a document offering guidance in the study of a given topic, providing suggested texts to read, reflect on, and discuss.
Galvez, E. (2018). “Zombies in the Academy,” Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
