Honor Your Contract: Finding Sensibility in Community Colleges

Abstract

Background/Context: Community colleges are seen as malleable institutions that work closely with high schools, vocational programs, employers, and community organizations to provide an education for all members of their local community. As an extension of the community, the education provided must address larger social changes (i.e., Affirmative Action, Title IX regulations) while simultaneously adjusting to the needs of the student population (i.e., food pantries, financial insecurities, homelessness, job outlook). This is a major responsibility, and working with these organizations to create programs designed to serve the needs of the people requires an agreement, or a social contract formed between these organizations and the community college. Due to the various needs of students and other social factors that create unique circumstances for certain groups, including racial minorities, neurodiverse populations, and the like, it is important to look at this contract with a critical eye. Using Charles W. Mills’s (1997) framework on the racial contract and collaborative autoethnography, we examined our lived experiences as members of a community college on the East Coast to understand how the racial contract shaped our social interactions and self-perceptions as a faculty member and as a student of color in higher education. This is accomplished by applying Robin Isserles’s (2021) concept of student sensibility, which asserts that academia is geared toward certain populations being successful, and because of this, students of color often struggle to develop a sense of belonging and achieve student success outcomes. Further, we provide implications for creating a more equitable workplace and learning place for faculty and students of color, respectively, at community colleges. Purpose: The purpose of the article is to explore student sensibility at an East Coast community college using the racial contract framework. It is explored through the experiences of Wonmai, a Thai American, cisgender, female PhD student (formerly a community college student) and Myron, a Black, cisgender, male sociology professor at the same community college. In the first half of the collaborative autoethnography, the student describes how her identity informed her transition from high school to college and shaped her sense of belonging and navigation within higher education. In the other half of the collaborative autoethnography, the professor illustrates how his dedication to supporting students from minority backgrounds has led to an overreliance on him as a faculty resource. The professor not only discusses his experiences as a faculty resource, but also discusses the role that racial outsourcing plays, or the ways in which academic institutions rely on faculty of color to provide an equitable educational experience and other services to students of color (as cited in Wingfield, 2019). Collectively, they share how race, racism, and the institutional culture within higher education shape the ways in which they see themselves as faculty and student. Overall, the goal of this article is to add to the scholarship on student development and faculty involvement, as well as critique institutional racial practices that continue to limit the outcomes of students and faculty of color altogether. Research Design: We utilize a collaborative autoethnography approach to explore student sensibility, racial outsourcing, and the racial contract. We chose this approach rather than the traditional autoethnographic approach to circumvent some of the ethical challenges of the traditional autoethnographic approach like issues with enactment of relational ethics, researcher vulnerability, degree of rigor, and the risk of leaning toward self-indulgence (Lapadat, 2017). By working together and sharing our personal stories to explore the impact of the racial contract and racial outsourcing on student sensibility, this methodology shifts the focus from a singular analysis to a collective perspective. Findings: Autoethnographic analysis yielded complex results. The PhD student experienced overt racist incidents and microaggression in high school and struggled to find a sense of belonging. Although she felt isolated and invalidated in high school, this experience was a vast contrast to her newer experience at the community college. At the community college, she was able to thrive and find a sense of belonging through the programs and opportunities. Although there are programs and policies that help students make sense and gain comfortability, the professor focused on the physical and emotional labor that faculty of color bear in the community college environment, which places obstacles such as racial outsourcing and heavy workload on faculty of color, resulting in heavy emotional work, among other outcomes. Conclusions: This article explores how the role of the racial contract and racial outsourcing shape student sensibility by using collaborative autoethnography about a former community college student of color and a current community college professor of color on the East Coast. Though there are limitations to this article, much can be learned from the analysis, which shows that the results were complex. The social contract between community colleges and the larger community has had a positive impact on student sensibility. The student was able to thrive and find sensibility within the community college system, compared to her secondary education experience. As result, she was able to take advantage of educational opportunities and explore many different interests, such as theater and studying abroad. However, applying a racial contract framework to the student sensibility, the professor illuminates that faculty issues, such as racial outsourcing, heavy workload, and the like, result in increased physical and emotional labor that affect not only student sensibility, but also the sense of belonging of faculty of color in higher education. Afrofuturism is discussed as a way to transcend the hegemonic structure. Through creative assignments and placing experience at the center, it can be a liberatory and experiential way of learning for many students because they are able to connect personal experiences to academic discussions through things they find meaningful.