UCLA

Postsecondary institutions are working to remedy campus race relations. Although initiatives from course requirements to diversity offices have been implemented, racialized disparities remain a pressing concern. The online domain has also challenged institutions to consider what responsibility campuses have in the racial climate experiences of students’ web-based interactions. This dissertation study therefore examines whether diversity work has created institutional change and positively shaped the campus experience for racially diverse students. Drawing upon critical race theories in education, I conducted a qualitative phenomenological study to explore how undergraduates make sense of their contemporary campus racial climate experiences in relation to their perceptions about their institution’s historical legacies of racism. Data collection methods included textual analysis of campus artifacts, video-elicited focus groups, semi-structured walking interviews, and ethnographic observations of 12 undergraduate students attending the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Three findings emerged from the study. First, minoritized students negotiate their online experiences with a greater sense of autonomy to avoid racial hostility. Their on-campus experiences, in contrast, are often fixed by uncontrollable circumstances such as required courses taught by racially insensitive instructors. Second, Students of Color identified direct parallels between their contemporary experiences and the racialized ideologies behind past racial incidents at UCLA. They noted, for example, how stereotypes used in the YouTube video “Asians in the Library” (2011) were consistent with how their contemporary peers envision Asian and Asian American students as the “model minority.” Third, despite UCLA’s public history of racial incidents, participants came to their studies believing UCLA would be a “dream”-like escape from their racialized pasts. Their individual encounters with racial microaggressions from peers and instructors marked the beginning of their idyllic expectations of UCLA to fade away.

Participants’ experiences demonstrate, despite advertised institutional investments in diversity over time, little substantive improvements have occurred within their campus’ racial climate. Findings have implications for how administrators and practitioners work to better serve the needs of racially diverse students. Moreover, this study contributes to methodological practice by situating social media texts as elicitation devices to nuance the study of campus racial climate within contemporary digital cultures.