Segregation or Student Support?

When Brielle Shorter was in high school, her heart was set on attending a historically Black college, where she imagined she’d be surrounded by people who shared common experiences in an environment made to support Black students.

All of the 13 HBCUs she applied to accepted her, but none offered full scholarships. Ohio State University, in Columbus, did. Grateful, but apprehensive, she enrolled.

Black students make up about 8 percent of the flagship’s nearly 46,000 undergraduate students, and when she toured the 1,600-acre campus, “I told my mom there’s not enough diversity for me,” she says. “My idea of an OSU student was a frat boy,” and during her tour, she saw a lot of guys who seemed to fit the profile. Her mother told her there were plenty of Black students — “you just aren’t seeing them.”

With no other affordable options, and a prestigious scholarship at a top public university hard to pass up, “I said I would make the most of it,” says Shorter, now a 19-year-old sophomore. “That’s what I’m here trying to do.”

Wearing a headset over long, pulled-back braids, looking every bit the part-time model she is even in sweatpants and a T-shirt, Shorter crossed the campus from one meeting to another on a September afternoon. After lunch, she knocked on the door of a recording studio to join an in-progress podcast about mental-health services tailored to students of color. Later that evening, she led a discussion with the Black Caucus, an arm of the Undergraduate Student Government, about plans to start a yearbook for Black Ohio State students.

Feeling connected takes work at a predominantly white university, Shorter has found.

“When I go to class, people move away from me,” she says, matter-of-factly. “They just gravitate to people they’re naturally comfortable with.” When you’re among the few Black students in the class, she would tell prospective students, “be prepared to sit mostly alone.” In a group discussion, don’t be surprised if you feel invisible.

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A sense of connection, experts say, can be critical to academic success, but for underrepresented-minority students like Shorter who find themselves among the few people of color in their classrooms, it can be elusive. Affinity groups that allow students to socialize with members of their own race let them “refuel” in a comfortable setting with classmates who understand the challenges they’re facing, many student leaders and experts believe. They’re pushing colleges to provide more resources that meet those students’ specific needs, whether it’s for culturally sensitive counselors, lounges to kick back in, or help navigating financial-aid forms. These could also, they argue, help colleges with two of their biggest admissions challenges: recruiting and retaining Black students.

No matter what the goals are, Republican lawmakers counter, manufactured racial groupings are illegal, ineffective, and an approach that pits students against one other. At least 40 bills have been introduced in 22 states that would dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and seven have become law. Some of the bills that were tabled are expected to be brought up again over the coming year.

Colleges worried about losing state aid are pre-emptively scaling back efforts to place students together based on race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

Picking up the slack have been the student leaders who run the clubs, recruit the students, and pressure administrators to follow through on their diversity commitments.

As the recipient of a Morrill Scholarship awarded to “academically talented students who are actively engaged in diversity-based leadership, service, and social-justice activities,” Shorter feels a responsibility to help students like herself feel less alone.

“I came around to thinking that maybe my calling wasn’t to grow in an HBCU, but to help leave the campus here a little more diverse and equitable than when I came,” says Shorter, who hopes to become a counselor or other health professional. “We could make it better and have a mini-HBCU experience here.”

Antar A. Tichavakunda, an assistant professor of race and education at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says the pressures on students will only intensify if lawmakers succeed in restricting the work of DEI offices. “Students are going to create these spaces for themselves,” he says. “They’ll stay up late to put on a good event for the community.” Sometimes, he says, they end up as “basically unpaid diversity workers.”

While much of higher education’s focus on anti-DEI attacks has been on Florida and Texas, Ohio educators have been fending off an equally ambitious legislative effort to roll back diversity initiatives in the state’s colleges. Senate Bill 83 would ban most mandatory diversity training, prohibit the use of diversity statements in hiring or admissions, and could also have the effect of preventing institutions from funding diversity offices.

The bill, which was passed by the Senate but not the House during the last legislative session, is being revamped, and the sponsor has announced plans to reintroduce it this year. As passed by the Senate, it would have required state institutions to ban affinity groups and any policies “explicitly designed to segregate faculty, staff, or students by group identities such as race, sex, gender identity, or gender expression.” The ban would have included “orientations, majors, financial awards, residential housing, administrative employment, faculty employment, student training, extracurricular activities, and graduations.”

Shorter was among dozens of students who rallied against the legislation in June, arguing that, among other things, it would decimate campus life for many marginalized students by eliminating a wide array of groups like Black student unions and Black fraternities and sororities, as well as LGBTQ groups. The bill was amended to limit the bans on identity-specific student organizations to credit-bearing classes, orientations, and graduations.

Even so, critics say it would set back efforts to diversify higher education and undermine efforts to attract top-quality students and faculty members. The bill’s sponsor, State Sen. Jerry C. Cirino, a Republican, did not respond to requests for information about how, specifically, the current version of the bill would affect student activities or diversity scholarships.

“When I saw it originally, I thought it was a joke,” Shorter says. “I started asking around — have you seen this? This is real, and it’s in Ohio. I’d been seeing drastic, wild things in Florida, but I wanted to think we were different.” A psychology major on a pre-med track, she says she wishes she didn’t have to take time away from her studies to try to keep students informed about possible threats to diversity programs. “I feel like I had to have my ear on it all the time,” she says.

Shorter, who grew up in a predominantly white Cincinnati suburb, where she says she had to fight her way into advanced classes, recalls what amounted to a racial awakening in eighth grade. “In 2016, that’s when I became Black,” she says. A classmate, emboldened by former President Trump’s election, had been making racist comments he said the president would agree with. Meanwhile, in the news, Black people were being killed by white police officers. Then a driver cutting her father off from a parking space yelled out the N-word. “Since then,” Shorter says, “I’ve almost become hyper-aware of my Blackness.”

Adding to her discomfort were the recent attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June that struck down colleges’ use of race-conscious admissions. In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor wrote that the extensive race-neutral strategies it’s rolled out since affirmative action was banned in that state hadn’t created the racial diversity needed to “dispel stereotypes and to ensure that minority students do not feel isolated or that they must act as spokespersons for their race.” Black student leaders in Ann Arbor told The Chronicle that they had to work hard seeking out other Black students since there were so few of them.

If the number of Black college students were to shrink in Ohio, creating a sense of community could become even harder. That has important implications for efforts to bridge racial gaps in college attainment, since research has shown that students who feel welcomed and supported by their colleges generally get better grades and fare better on persistence, engagement, and mental health.

Ohio State’s six-year graduation rate for Black students who started in 2017 was 79 percent, compared with 86 percent for Hispanic students and 88 percent for white students.

Similar challenges have faced students of other minority groups advocating for better resources and representation on their campuses. But Black students have seen some of the steepest enrollment declines nationally in recent years.

And in Ohio, it’s the largest minority demographic, at 13.3 percent of the population.

At a time when many colleges are struggling to enroll and retain Black students, institutions should be concerned, Tichavakunda says, that so many Black students question whether they belong there.

At issue is how proactive administrators should be when it comes to facilitating affinity groups.

Ohio State University has a range of programs designed to support students from underrepresented groups, many of which are included under the umbrella of the Center for Belonging and Social Change. The center, which offers hundreds of workshops and programs that celebrate different cultures, was created last year with the merger of the Multicultural Center and Social Change Program. “When I toured the campus it was the multicultural center,” Shorter says. “When I came to campus the next year it had changed to something else.”

The focus, the website says, is on well-being, forming meaningful relationships among peers, and expanding understandings of social responsibility and civic engagement.

The center, with a comfortable lounge, vibrantly painted hallways, and displays of artwork and artifacts from a variety of cultures, is located near the entrance to the sprawling three-story student union. It’s meant to serve as a hub for students from a broad spectrum of cultural, racial, religious, sexual, and other identity groups, as well as those interested in social-justice issues like prison reform and literacy. First-generation students, students with disabilities, LGBTQ members, and those of all races and ethnicities are invited to participate in programs and take part in intercultural dialogues. The center has 11 staff members, including an embedded therapist, as well as four graduate administrative associates, and 13 undergraduate assistants.

Similar shifts to centers of belonging are happening at colleges across the country, where chief diversity officers are becoming chief “belonging” officers, at least in part to reflect a concept seen as more politically palatable to DEI skeptics. And while many welcome the switch as a sign that campuses are being broadly inclusive, some worry that it could dilute the focus on the unique needs of individual minority groups. To Shorter, “it seems like they’re focusing on everything and everyone.”

That’s not the case at Ohio State’s Hale Hall, a historic building a 10-minute walk from the student union. The building, which now houses the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and is the meeting place for several Black student groups, is steeped in history and significance for generations of Black students.

Walk across the South Oval past students crisscrossing tree-lined sidewalks, dodge food-delivery robots whisking meals to hungry students, and you’ll come upon a stately red-brick building described in an OSU article as featuring “Jacobethan architecture with parapeted gables and classic Doric and Ionic columns.” Built in 1909 on a site that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the building now known as Hale Hall was turned into the Hale Black Cultural Center following years of escalating racial tensions and student protests in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among the students’ demands were the creation of a Black-studies program and an Office of Minority Affairs, both of which they won.

Despite several renovations, the building shows its age in the windowless basement cubicles and stuffy classrooms where some Black student groups meet. Students are pushing for renovations they say will make it more welcoming. A corner room in the building was recently turned into a small lounge with couches, study tables, and a TV. A sign on the wall reads “A Home Away From Home.” On a recent midweek afternoon, two students were taking a break between classes, reading. Later that afternoon, the room was empty.

Shorter describes Hale as “an old, dusty building that’s very outdated” and says it’s “almost hurtful that our space is so lackluster.”

While many scholars and students see affinity groups and cultural centers as key to students’ sense of belonging, others argue that they segregate more than support students.

“Theoretically, it makes sense, if you feel like you’re not included in the larger population, to want a place where you can go and be around people who look like you,” says Nafees Alam, an assistant professor of social work at Boise State University. But Alam, who immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh with his parents at age 7, says it’s a mistake to assume that “they must have shared experiences because they share a skin color.”

And he adds that “I wonder if safe spaces can potentially do more harm than good. If you spend a lot of time in safe spaces, how amplified is that ‘me versus you’ mind-set? The more we put ourselves in that echo chamber of space, the less likely that we’d be open to different opinions, different ideas and philosophies.”

Others disagree. People who are members of affinity groups that provide a sense of belonging are often the ones who are most active in reaching across cultural groups and differences, says Beverly Daniel Tatum, who served as president of Spelman College from 2002 to 2015 and last year was interim president of Mount Holyoke College. Tatum is the author of the 1997 book (updated and reissued in 2017): Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

Students who belong to affinity groups, she says, are often more willing to take risks and step out of their comfort zones. So in this way, programs that are sometimes derided as isolating “safe spaces” can be launching pads for greater cross-campus interaction. “When you have gas in your tank you can go out and do things,” Tatum says.

Attacks in many states on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs create “a potentially toxic environment for students who are already underrepresented,” says Tatum, who is a clinical psychologist and expert on race relations.

Tichavakunda, who has written a book on the experiences of Black students on predominantly white campuses, says identity-based groups and centers are places to meet friends and have fun, not just to commiserate.

“When you think of Black student life at predominantly white institutions, what comes to mind?” Tichavakunda asks in an interview. “Invariably everyone says protests, microaggressions, being the only one, tokenization.” That’s all true, he says, “but there’s also this other entire experience we need to understand and uplift and support.”

He says that Ohio’s SB 83 is only the most recent threat to marginalized students’ self-confidence. “DEI is nowhere near enough,” he says. “If we fear saying the name, we really should be worried.”

Tichavakunda was a research contributor to a new report prepared by a statewide student group in Ohio that Shorter is active in, about the experiences of Black students at 12 Ohio colleges. The survey of 361 Black students, released in August, found that many were struggling to fit in at predominantly white campuses. Fifty-one percent of Black students at predominantly white colleges reported feeling like they belong, compared with 74 percent of Black students at the state’s two HBCUs. At predominantly white colleges, two thirds of the Black students who responded said they were either unsure or disagreed that their college’s administration valued Black students.

The findings are particularly relevant now, the report states, not only because of the end of affirmative action and challenges to DEI. “In the George Floyd era, in the midst of a global uptick in racialized violence, the experiences, anxieties and needs of Black students demand greater attention than ever,” it says.

“Universities have a responsibility to express not only how they will respond, but to double down on their commitment to support and engage Black students so they’ll be successful in college,” says Everrett A. Smith, associate professor of higher education at the University of Cincinnati and another researcher for the report.

In states where diversity initiatives are under attack, many campus leaders have appeared reluctant to invite political backlash by speaking out publicly. Ohio State’s Board of Trustees in May did issue a statement opposing SB 83, but students interviewed by The Chronicle said they wished the university had been more forthcoming about how the offices and programs they’d come to rely on might be affected if the legislation passed.

Over the past few weeks, Chronicle calls and emails to the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Center for Belonging seeking information about efforts to improve Black students’ experience were referred to a campus spokesman, who said the university was “not going to be able to accommodate” interviews.

Instead, he emailed a list of programs, including mental-health counseling targeted to specific populations, support for celebrations such as the African American Heritage Festival, and a monthly gathering, led by two Black male therapists, for students to discuss needs and challenges.

Students, however, sometimes need help making those connections, experts say, especially if they’re the first in their families to attend college or if they’ve grown up with the idea that seeking mental-health help is a sign of weakness.

“For a lot of Black students, coming here can be pretty daunting,” says Isaiah Stokes, a sophomore who’s a leader in the campus’s Black Student Association. As a low-income Black student, he wasn’t convinced he was up to the challenge of a place like Ohio State, he wrote in a text message. “Seeing my white counterparts thrive in an environment that I was so afraid of didn’t make it any better.” It was only after he started attending Black Student Association events and seeing students with similar backgrounds taking advantage of campus resources and thriving “that I felt empowered to do the same.” At each of the events, he says, the group tries to feature a different resource, like the student-run Black Mental Health Coalition.

“We want to make sure every Black student on campus knows that there’s a space for them and there are people here who will advocate for them and a place to be around people who understand them and can relate to their experience,” Stokes says.

Just as the risks of further isolation could increase if minority enrollments shrink further, so too could the pressure on student leaders to advocate for their classmates, says Zainab Okolo, senior vice president for policy, advocacy, and government relations for the Jed Foundation, which advocates for youth mental health.

“It takes a lot of psychic energy to do this work. You’re essentially trying to grow under a constant gaze,” Okolo says. The implications for colleges struggling with enrollment declines are huge, she says. In 2021, more than 60 percent of the students who didn’t return cited stress related to mental health.

Maceda Berhanu, a first-generation college student from Maryland whose parents immigrated from Ethiopia, knew the adjustment to Ohio State was going to be tough. Like Shorter, she ended up there on a Morrill Scholarship.

During the spring before her freshman year, Berhanu and a friend she met online created a group chat and an Instagram page for incoming Black freshmen. “Both of us were coming from very diverse environments in Maryland, and when we checked out the OSU 2025 page, we saw maybe five people who looked like us,” she says. They created Zoom movie nights where the group would vote on which movie to watch, post it on one of their screens, and pause the movie to talk about it. “We really bonded before coming to campus,” she says. “It would have been a different overall vibe if we hadn’t.” The group chat, which now has 257 members, has helped her overcome doubts about whether she can succeed there.

Berhanu is continuing to make those connections now, as a leader in the Black Caucus, a branch of undergraduate student government created in 2020 to make sure the needs of Black students were being heard. At the time, none of the senior positions in student government were held by Black students.

The Black Caucus occasionally holds what they call “digging deeper” events. In one, students sit around tables playing a card game called “We’re not really strangers,” which encourages them, through questions that get progressively deeper, to open up about issues that may be troubling them. In the second half of the meeting, counselors or other student-support professionals talk about campus resources they might want to check out.

Erin Williams, another Black Caucus leader, says she’s among the relatively few Black students majoring in business and, when she walks into a room that feels like a sea of white and Asian faces, “I feel like I’m invisible.” During an exercise in which students were trying out elevator speeches for their projects, her partner acted uninterested and quickly moved on, Williams says.

When she gets together with Black friends, it helps to be able to ask someone who gets it, “Am I tripping or do I just not know how to talk to them?” The energy, she says, is so different when she’s hanging out with friends from the Black Caucus where, last month, she led a discussion interspersed by laughter and stories.

Dozens of students from the Student Government Association and the Black Caucus were sprawled on blankets on a campus lawn where the meeting had been moved outside for an informal gathering and a team-building painting exercise. The student government members were overwhelmingly white, the 40 or so Black Caucus members sitting together in circles, updating each other on policies and projects they planned to pursue this fall.

“Making sure we’re on the same page and presenting our ideas as a group makes us more effective” in influencing the larger student body, Williams says. She says she’s looking forward to getting together with her counterparts from the other branches of student government to trade ideas. Being able to discuss issues as a Black Caucus, first, makes it easier, not harder, she says, to find common ground.