Building for the Future: Reflection, Resources, and Recommendations

Abstract

We conclude the text with a look to the future and considerations and recommendations for centering social justice in residence life contexts.

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

“…Further, a growing body of scholarship urges practitioners to consider how power pervades all aspects of residence life and to center social justice in recruitment, training, programming, and policy (e.g., Kortegast & Croom, 2019). Howard and Kerr (2019) recognized that positioning residence halls as home can minimize how residence halls function as sites of oppression and harm, especially for minoritized students. Universities endeavor to build welcoming and diverse communities via on-campus housing (Blimling, 2014), but there is a need to further document how power, like whiteness, structures housing spaces.…”

“…This study’s findings illuminate whiteness’s pervasive nature in the white space of residence halls—this violence undermines possibilities for safe communities. Further, not all students arrive to campus with positive associations with the word home , and it is dishonest for administrators to assume that all students have unfettered access to safety, comfort, and refuge within residence halls (Howard & Kerr, 2019). In evoking and constructing communities as universally harmonious in race-evasive ways, administrators, especially white administrators, downplayed and erased the racism and violence that students, especially Students of Color, were subject to.…”

“…Howard and Kerr (2019) encouraged universities to build communities, practices, and systems that have the capacity to be safe, inclusive, and responsive to students’ needs. These recommendations necessitate disrupting whiteness.…”

The Barcelona Conference on Education 2023: Official Conference Proceedings

“…Although many institutions administratively perceive student halls of residence as a means to foster support to its students, some tend to believe community and belonging will form themselves (Foste & Irwin, 2023) by students' action and without any extra endeavor from the University side besides the availability of space. It is important to remember that "not all students arrive to campus with positive associations with the word home, and it is dishonest for administrators to assume that all students have unfettered access to safety, comfort, and refuge within residence halls" (Howard & Kerr, 2019).…”

“…On the other hand, negative aspects of life inside student housing have been investigated lately, shedding light in dense problems of power dynamics regarding interracial relations, such as microaggressions, racism and black loneliness (Foste & Irwin, 2023;Hotchkins & Dancy (2017); Howard & Kerr (2019)) and intercultural exchanges such as cultural shock, loneliness, physical, psychological, and social decline (Moores & Popadiuk, 2011;Mori, 2000;Poyrazli, Kavanaugh, Baker, & Al-Timimi, 2004). In Howard and Kerr's (2019) study they stated that "positioning residence halls as home can minimize how residence halls function as sites of oppression and harm, especially for minoritized students".…”