Campus Balkanization and Segregation

Putting Students' Patterns of Association into Context

Although undergraduate students enter college with already developed personal biases and prejudices, the culture of a campus, guided by its institutional policies and practices, also shapes the level and quality of students' patterns of association and engagement. Campuses have historically held newly entering groups of students—such as, but not limited to, racial minorities—responsible for adjusting to the majority culture instead of making broader changes to the campus environment to better serve all students. This arrangement creates a set of circumstances whereby students from groups with a longer history of enrolling in higher education continue to function much more adeptly within traditional student organizations, even as the composition of the student body changes. To illustrate this point, consider a hypothetical campus with a predominantly White student population. Even though this campus has a small percentage of students of color as well as foreign students, its student culture is largely shaped by a set of prevailing norms, values, and practices that cater mostly to its White students. The only student organizations available on this nondiverse campus are traditional ones such as fraternities, sororities, dining clubs, honor societies, athletic teams, student government, or other long-standing university service groups. Not surprisingly, clubs organized around the interests of students of color do not exist.

The few students of color enrolled at this hypothetical predominantly White campus have only two options for participation in student organizations. One option is to try to assimilate into the mainstream. Choosing this route, however, may ultimately compromise students' cultural heritage or sensibilities, because traditional groups have typically viewed the cultural practices and norms of many students from historically excluded groups as deviant or inferior. By joining the mainstream, for example, students may find themselves dressing up in Native American costumes to promote so-called school spirit or attending fraternity- and sorority-sponsored parties with themes such as “South of the Border,” “Turning Japanese,” or “Ghetto Fabulous.” The second option, avoiding assimilation, obliges many students of color to spend their out-of-class time in what may be described as the margins of the mainstream. Unfortunately, neither of these options contributes to changing the prevailing arrangements on campus, and each cedes the power for dictating cocur-ricular life to those who have traditionally held it. Moreover, students who do not join the mainstream do not reap the benefits of valuable campus resources that their student fees help to support, or of the educational rewards that come with being involved on campus.

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