Unleashing Suppressed Voices on College Campuses

To address contemporary issues of equity and inclusion, identity, and accessibility in higher education, for example, this second edition on Unleashing Suppressed Voices utilizes a case study approach to share narratives of lived experiences that provide insights that are useful in understanding how to forge change and transformation regarding race, ethnicity, gender, class, ableness and other encounters in academic communities. The book is divided into five parts. Part I is an introductory section that outlines this text; and it also includes two chapters; one is a chapter concerning theoretical foundations on which premises of this edition is based. The other is a chapter that discusses pedagogical uses of case studies, thereby indicating how to apply theory to practice. The second part of Unleashing examines identity, environment, and issues related to accessibility. In the third part, cases provide experiences that help readers understand the value of students’ voices and engagements as forms of inclusion and equity. Leadership and governance, where faculty are concerned, require input from faculty in order to develop and sustain a culture of equity in higher education, which is discussed in the fourth part. The final section of the book explores issues and experiences some people have encountered working to achieve inclusion, diversity, and equity within their particular areas of employment and engagement in higher education.

Part II: Identity, Environment, and Accessibility

Part II provides an intersectional discussion of the various ways people think about and live identity. This discussion connects identity to space and place, while also indicating that identity for some is the essence of encounters they experience based on others’ reactions to their bodies and what their presence suggests and embodies. For others, identity is shaped by imaginations that otherize them as human beings. The content of cases in Part II, therefore, includes chapters on audism, gender inclusiveness, acts of racism, food needs, the need for various kinds of assistance as well as the call for policies that provide greater inclusivity and belonging in every area of academic life.

Part III: Students’ Voices and Engagement

Part IV: Leadership, Governance, and Faculty

Continuously, ideas and best practices concerning leadership, governance, and faculty decision making are in great demand in order to further improve relationships among diverse communities of people in the academy. With the many and varied types of leadership styles and practices of governance, institutions of higher learning have to be committed to collecting data and stories that help leaders understand how to transform existing systems and policies that are failing to produce inclusivity and equitable practices. The cases in Part IV offer new paths and ideas that suggest new management and policy approaches that build confidence among approaches developed to improve inclusiveness in leadership within departments, schools, colleges, provost offices, and offices of the president. Not only do faculty want to be valued, they also desire to be included in decisions; they often like to have a voice in determining evolving policies, actions, and governance approaches that strengthen leadership at every level of the university. In Part IV, cases, such as “We Hire Them But Cannot Retain Them,” “To Be Young, Gifted, and Tenured,” “We Have to Do Better,” “Speak Up or Stay Silent,” “A Tenured Threat Case,” and “It’s Not Magic, It’s Mentoring,” provide appropriate narratives that emphasize a greater need for inclusiveness, shared authority, and leadership.

Part V: Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity

Taken together, each section of this volume, through the collective cases, offers a different perspective on issues and encounters that individuals in higher education experience continuously. Our work, therefore, concerns paying close attention to consistencies that sustain exclusion, to forms of resistance that maintain hegemonic thinking, and to practices and policies that produce stagnation and no real transformation. We also give attention to articulating ways forward that offer new paths to achieving complete diversity and full inclusiveness in the academy.

Why Use Theory?

There are three reasons why administrators should integrate theory into their daily practices and decision-making processes according to McEwen (2003a, p. 154): 1) it provides a theoretical basis for knowledge, expertise, and practice serves as a foundation for a profession; 2) knowing and understanding theory provides a medium of communication and understanding among student affairs professionals; and 3) theory can serve as a common language within a community of scholars. Student development theory is a framework to inform thinking and understanding of the complexities of human development. Bell (1997) expounds upon the importance of theory stressing that it allows those reading the cases to clearly think about their intentions and how they manifest themselves in actions and outcomes. She also states that theory allows the reader to question old practices and create new techniques or paradigms. Last, theory forces people to learn from the past and stay conscious of how current situations can be viewed in a more imaginative and effective manner.

Clusters of Student Development Theories

There are several clusters of student development theories and they are psychosocial, cognitive structural, typology, and person environment (Patton et al., 2016). Psychosocial development is concerned with the major challenges that impact an individual’s personal and psychological oriented aspects of self and the relationships that exist between the self and society (Hamrick, Evans, & Schuh, 2002). According to Evans et al. (1998), “Psychosocial theorists examine the content of development, the important issues people face as their lives progress, such as how to define themselves, their relationships with others, and what to do with their lives” (p. 32). Primary theory in this cluster is the seven vectors of development (Chickering & Reisser, 1993) and they are: (1) developing competence; (2) managing emotions; (3) moving through autonomy toward interdependence; (4) developing mature interpersonal relationships; (5) establishing identity; (6) developing purpose; and (7) developing integrity.

Person environment theory examines the student and the environment as well as the interaction of the student with the environment. The formulae for this theory is bf = (p x e) and is often connected with the notion that challenge and support are important factors that should occur within an institutional environment to induce psychosocial and cognitive growth within the individual (Patton et al., 2016).

Cross’ Psychological Nigrescence

4) Internalization The idea of creating a healthy black identity revolves around two major concepts, reference group identity and race salience. Reference group identity, the foundation of nigrescence focuses on the complexity of social groups that individuals use to make sense of themselves as social beings (Vandiver, 2001). Race salience, “refers to the importance or significance of race in a person’s approach to life and is captured across two dimensions: degree of importance and the direction of the valence” (Vandiver, 2001 p. 168). An individual can have, for example, “a high salience for race with a positive (pro-Black) valence or a high salience for race with a negative (anti-Black) valence” (Vandiver, 2001, p. 168).

Privilege, Multicultural Competence, and White Identity Development

McIntosh (1988) wrote a germinal article on privilege in which she defines it as the process of granting the dominant group opportunities that indiscriminately or blatantly acknowledges them systemically, politically, economically, and culturally. The unequal dissemination of these unearned privileges makes it difficult for marginalized or oppressed groups to gain any economic, personal, or cultural momentum in society (Hobgood, 2000; Howard-Hamilton & Frazier, 2005). Moreover, the effects of privilege “are so pervasive that they can be felt between people of color even when no white people are present, as well as between whites even when no people of color are present” (Hobgood, 2000. p. 36). Higher education administrators and faculty should examine their assumptions, biases, and privileges because who we are and what we believe may have a direct impact on how the cases in this text will be evaluated, deliberated, and reviewed. Moreover, when a recommendation is made regarding the outcome of how the individuals or organization in the case should be treated, the sanction could be too harsh or too lenient depending upon the personal world view of the reader. McEwen (2003a) insists that

Reading and memorizing theoretical stages and applying them randomly without personal reflection and purposeful planning could leave the administrator and student disappointed and bitter because a sensitive and thoughtful plan of action was not taken. Assumptions about a person’s race, class, or gender is the mindset of a privileged individual. Multiculturally competent faculty, administrators, and staff would engage in personal reflection in addition to understanding and learning about other cultures, recognizing and deconstructing white culture, recognizing the legitimacy of other cultures and developing a multicultural outlook (Ortiz & Rhoads, 2000). Therefore, understanding and embracing the levels of white identity development becomes critical because it is foundation and framework for working with diverse groups. Furthermore, “identity development represents a qualitative enhancement of the self in terms of complexity and integration” (McEwen, 2003b, p. 205). The White Identity Development Model is a prime example of how one’s identity becomes more complex when attempting to inculcate diversity issues with previous socialized perceptions of race.

The White Identity Development (WID) Model (Hardiman, 2001) was designed to explain “how Whites came to terms with their Whiteness with respect to racism and race privilege” (p. 111). The five stages of the WID are (1) No Social Consciousness of Race or Naiveté, (2) Acceptance, (3) Resistance, (4) Redefinition, and (5) Internalization.

The first stage is a naïve period in which whites have no understanding or recognition of other cultures and races. They are also unaware of how status and value is ascribed to one race over another. Acceptance, stage two, occurs when Whites recognize that “it is impossible in this society to escape racist socialization in some form because of its pervasive, systemic, and interlocking nature” (Hardiman, 2001, p. 111). Whites have an understanding that privilege exists and accept an understanding that they are perceived as superior to people of color. This is not a conscious choice by white people but oftentimes is an unconscious choice and a “by-product of living within and being impacted by the institutional and cultural racism which surrounds us” (Hardiman, 2001, p. 111).

Social Justice Models

Social justice is a term used to describe a societal process in which there is a shared vision for the equitable distribution of resources and there is physical and psychological safety for all people (Bell, 1997). The individuals in a social justice system are self-determining and empowered. They “have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and the society as a whole” (Bell, 1997, p. 1).