Back to “Normal”: Institutional Priorities and Commitments through the Perspectives of Campus Staff of Color

• In Event: Five Years Later: Reflecting on Institutional Attempts to Repair Pandemic-Era Harms

Abstract

Purpose
In March 2020, the pandemic created rapidfire changes across and within higher education. As colleges and universities grappled with instructional delivery, creating remote programming, changes in residential housing, and supporting students through grief, trauma, and mental health stressors, campus staff were often the front line of enacting these changes (McClure et al., 2023). Within this same timespan, colleges and universities were forced to examine their own histories with racism and anti-Blackness, following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the resurgence of Black Lives Matters protests nationwide (Casellas Connors & McCoy, 2022). In response, campus staff, particularly campus staff of color, (CSOC) disproportionately engaged in the labor of racial response, serving on diversity committees, managing the emotional fragility of white colleagues, and continuing to create programs to support students (Briscoe & Ford, 2023; Cho & Brassfield, 2023). Four years later, campuses have returned to pre-pandemic activities, with campus staff still at the front lines. Within this context, this study examines how CSOC are faring, and the ways (or arguably, if) their racialized experiences and institutional promises have evolved.

Theoretical Framing, Methods, and Data Sources
Contextualized in how colleges and universities are racialized organizations (Ray, 2019), this study theoretical approach combines Cho’s (2018) institutional response framework (via, e.g., appeasing concerns or co-opting ideas) with Ward’s (2021) biopolitics of mobility, to illuminate how the existence of racialized bodies (i.e., CSOC) through campus roles and positions challenge the normality of white western coloniality. To do so, this qualitative study is grounded in narrative inquiry, utilizing semi-structured interviews and organizational data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Participant criteria centered on individuals identifying as a person of color and/or from the global south, who worked full-time at a college or university campus, whether that meant their role was unclassified (i.e., salaried) or classified (i.e., hourly). Through an open recruitment and targeted sampling through listservs, study participants totaled 65, with data collection occurring from January to May of 2024. Data analysis includes several rounds of iterative coding (amongst the 6-member research team via the platform Dedoose), which ultimately converged towards a narrative and thematic analysis illuminating organizational priorities.

Results and Significance
The central narrative for this paper focuses on the relationship between normalcy and institutional survival. The three themes this paper discusses are (1) the range of strategies colleges and universities employed and expected of so that students retained a semblance of the “normal college experience;” (2) the evolution (and absolution) of race-based initiatives through the framings of crisis and urgency; and (3) the cyclical continuance of promises towards racial justice and campus interpretations regarding policy restrictions. Across the diversity of participant institutions, roles, and responsibilities, and their reflections regarding their roles and responsibilities over the past four years, is the undercurrent of colleges and universities operating in a space of whatever it takes to keep things moving– with the challenge of “what” is actually being moved and transformed in higher education.

Authors

• Katherine S. Cho, Loyola University Chicago

• Ahjah M. Johnson, Independent Scholar

• Lauren Brassfield, University of Denver

• Tristen Hall, Miami University (OH)

• Anika Patel, Northwestern University

• Valerie Olivares, City College of San Francisco