Graduation Term

Summer 2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Educational Administration and Foundations: Educational Administration

Committee Chair

Diane C. Gardner Renn

Committee Co-Chair

Lenford Sutton

Committee Member

Jay Garvey

Committee Member

Don C. Sawyer, III

Committee Member

DuJuan E. Smith

Committee Member

S. Gavin Weiser

Abstract

BIPOC students at historically white colleges and universities (HwCU) often experience rejection, isolation, and marginalization in campus environments that remain unwelcoming and racially hostile. While research highlights the negative impact of these climates on student success, few studies interrogate whiteness as a structural force, shaping institutional culture and sustaining racial inequities. This study examines how whiteness is embedded in campus artifacts—including history, demography, curriculum, learning environment, climate, symbols, traditions, and spaces—and how it impacts BIPOC students' experiences.

Using a phenomenological approach, this study engaged 15 BIPOC students at Partly Cloudy University through surveys and interviews. Data were analyzed using critical whiteness studies to examine how campus artifacts function as transmitters of whiteness, reinforcing white supremacy through institutional structures and norms. Two key conceptual tools emerged: the misery index that quantifies the cumulative impact of exclusionary experiences and the invisible tapestry that captures whiteness saturation in the student experience.

Findings revealed campus climate as the most dominant factor in whiteness saturation, with seemingly neutral artifacts reinforcing systemic exclusion. This study shifts campus racial climate scholarship from BIPOC students’ perceptions to whiteness as an observed phenomenon, offering a new methodology for assessing and disrupting whiteness in higher education. The invisible tapestry provides a framework for making whiteness visible, thus challenging its neutrality and positioning HwCU administrators to pursue meaningful, structural change.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD.1763755358.510732

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