Zak Foste:Yeah, sure thing. So early in the book we introduced this concept of the empty vessel hypothesis, and it really lays the foundation, uh, for the rest of the book and, and what’s to come. And in short, what we’re getting at with the idea, I think, is there’s often an assumption that because white undergraduate students come to college primarily from racially homogenous, really segregated communities, that they know nothing about race, and that they’re essentially empty vessels, right? So because they experience silence in the classroom or silence in their homes via their families and their parents, um, or, or because they don’t receive the same type of proactive intentional messaging about race that many, um, children of color do, by v- by virtue of, survival and safety often, um, that, that white students are empty vessels.

Raechele Pope: Welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Rochelle Pope. Today we’re discussing the new book, Disrupting White Noise: Challenging Beliefs about Race on Campus by Zak Foste and Lauren Irwin. Many conversations about race in higher education begin with the assumption that white students simply need more exposure to diversity or education about racism.

But what if white students arrive on campus having already spent years learning powerful lessons about race through their families, schools, neighborhood, and everyday experiences? Drawing on years of qualitative research, Dr. Foste and Irwin challenge this empty vessel hypothesis, examining how colleges and universities can reproduce rather than disrupt the racial understanding students bring with them.

Their work invites us to rethink how students learn about race and the role institutions play in reinforcing or challenging those lessons. This is a really thoughtful and timely book for anyone committed to creating more equitable and educationally meaningful campus environments Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in, alongside, or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs.

We hope that these conversations are restorative to the profession and help us learn and grow together. We release new episodes every Wednesday. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and visit studentaffairsnow.com to explore our growing collection of episodes and resources. Today’s episode is sponsored by Evolve.

Evolve offers four leadership coaching journeys designed to expand capacity and build capabilities, empowering courageous leadership to transform institutions and reimagine the future of higher education. As I mentioned, I’m Rochelle Pope. My pronouns are she and her. I’m a recent professor emerita and former professor and senior associate dean for the faculty and student affairs, and chief diversity officer for the Graduate School of Education at the University of Buffalo.

Today I’m joining you from my new home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to this conversation. Dr. Foste and Dr. Erwin, thank you so much for joining us today, and welcome to the podcast.

Zak Foste: Yeah,

Raechele Pope: thanks so

Lauren Irwin: much for having us. Thanks for

Zak Foste: having us.

Raechele Pope: Yeah, I, I am so excited- Yeah

about talking about this book with you, ’cause I got to read it- Us too … and I just think it’s just great. But- Thank you … before, why don’t we bring our readers in, I mean, our listeners in. And, um, Zak and Lauren, why don’t you begin by having you briefly introduce yourselves to our listeners, and begin by telling us a bit about you, your current role, and a bit about your pathway to this topic- Mm

and this book.

Lauren Irwin: Yeah

Zak Foste: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Rochelle, and thanks for, um, thanks for having us. So, uh, my name’s Zak Foste. Uh, my pronouns are he, him, his. Uh, I’m coming to you today, uh, from Lawrence, Kansas, which sits on the home of the, the ancestral homes of the Kaw, Shawnee, and Osage people. Um, currently an associate professor of higher education administration at the University of Kansas, and also the department chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies here at KU.

Uh, I’m really excited to talk about the book today. This has probably been the highlight of my career working on this project with a, a dear friend and colleague. Uh, Lauren very much, I think, represents much of our own both sort of scholarly interests and our sort of, like, biographical journey as, as white scholars, um, doing this work as both practitioners and, and, and faculty members in, in higher education.

Raechele Pope: Great. Thanks.

Lauren Irwin: Great. Thanks, Zak. Hi, everyone. I’m Lauren Irwin, and I use she, her pronouns. I’m currently an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. Um, and I’m joining you all today from Knoxville, which, um, means that I currently reside and work on the traditional homelands of the peoples now known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, the Yuchi, Muscogee Nation, and Shawnee peoples.

Um, as Zak mentioned, this book is really a, a culmination of a lot of our personal, professional, and now scholarly work. And so I think some important context for, for folks that are listening is I feel like a lot of what we trace in the book reflects a lot of my own experiences as someone, uh, who’s a White person, who was socialized in fairly racially segregated communities, and eventually was a very involved student leader in things like residence life, um, before ultimately becoming a student affairs practitioner.

So I bring a number of years of experience in residence life and leadership programs, um, that really left me with a lot more questions than answers when it came to the work of doing social justice in those spaces. Um, that really kind of prompted me to return to graduate school and pursue a PhD. Um, and through that work really realized that without, pursuing social justice without grappling with Whiteness, both my own and, and systemically, felt like a real missed opportunity or missing piece in some of my work.

And so I think a lot of that shapes, um, how I enter this conversation and how Zak and I often collaborate together. Mm-hmm. So really great to be here today.

Raechele Pope: Well, we’re glad to have you. And glad to have you two, um, both individually thinking about this work, and then putting it together for us in this book.

And I, as I said, I think the book is just really powerful and very helpful. Mm-hmm. And so in the read, one of the things that struck me about this book, and, you know, I mentioned in the in- introduction a bit, is that you challenge that assumption that many of us have in higher education, we probably don’t even realize that we’re making it.

Early in the book- Mm … you introduce what you call this empty vessel hypothesis. So why don’t you share, um, for the readers what the empty vessel hypothesis is, and why do you believe it has shaped so much of higher education’s thinking about race? How about if I direct this to you, Zak, first? You start us off here.

Zak Foste: Yeah, sure thing. Um, so early in the book we introduced this concept of the empty vessel hypothesis, and it really lays the foundation, uh, for the rest of the book and, and what’s to come. And in short, what we’re getting at with the idea, I think, is there’s often an assumption that because white undergraduate students come to college primarily from racially homogenous, really segregated communities, um, that they know nothing about race, and that they’re essentially empty vessels, right?

So because they experience silence in the classroom or silence in their homes via their families and their parents, um, or, or because they don’t receive the same type of proactive intentional messaging about race that many, um, children of color do, um, by v- by virtue of, um, survival and safety often, um, that, that white students are empty vessels.

Uh, and then sort of like the, the logical consequence of that is we often think that white students need sort of filling up with new content, right? That if we just expose them to enough content or ideas or experiences in the classroom or in co-curricular experiences, we’ll, uh, fill up the empty vessel, uh, in ways that offer sort of like an appropriate course correction, uh- Mm-hmm

for, for the, the years of adolescence and, and, and childhood that were relatively, uh, silent about race. And, and as we’ll talk about, I think, here today in our time together and we get at in the book, the consequence of that for us is that it misses in many ways the enormity of the racial socialization that white students experience in their formative years leading up to college.

And, and that was, uh, I think a really big motivating factor to write the book in the first place, is, uh, Lauren and I are both faculty members in higher education programs. We both study and write, as you do, Rochelle, in the higher education field. And there’s a lot of really brilliant, awesome work on white college students’ racial attitudes, their behaviors, their patterns of interaction.

Um- Very rarely, though, has that work explicitly taken the college years and put it into conversation with or linked it to the pre-college years, and we sort of saw that as a really significant gap in our understanding and, and then that’s where we essentially begin the book, with this idea of the empty vessel hypothesis, that White students don’t come to campus as empty vessels, and we ought to sort of account for all of the racial learning and socialization that occurs in those formative years.

Raechele Pope: What are they learning beforehand?

Lauren Irwin: Yeah. I can share, uh, a bit more about that. I think Zak touched on some of this of sort of maybe racial silence or things that students experience, but like all students who come to college, have grown up in neighborhoods and communities, likely with parents or guardians.

They’ve attended some form of K12 schools, probably been involved in whether it’s sports or a spiritual community. Um, and we recognize that all of those sources are really powerful developmental influences. None of that is particularly groundbreaking. Um, I think what we’re trying to show is how all of that provides an enormity, right, two plus decades of learning about race and whiteness.

And what we found from the students that Zak has interviewed and from some of our own work is that there’s some pretty consistent patterns that students experience in their pre-college environments. Um, the first is a relative degree of rac- racial homo- like homogeneity or segregation. Um, you know, there’s one student who talks about growing up in a relatively White suburban neighborhood, attending a White K…

predominantly White K12 school, and I think it really illustrates the ways in which, like, White often suburban folks often think of and experience communities of color, and particularly Black folks, as not just physically distant, but also quite emotionally distant. And they have almost like a pen pal exchange with students in a supposedly urban predominantly, uh, community of color, folks of color school, um, as if it’s this, like, foreign, uh, world that they could not, uh, broach or experience otherwise even though they’re probably about, like, 10, 15 miles apart.

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: I think further we see that a lot of students actually had a lot of desire to talk about race, right? When we’re seeing things like the murder of George Floyd, um, events in Ferguson, Missouri, um, wanting to have some guidance and direction from parents and teachers, but often being met with a lot of silence.

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: And so, you know, some of the few things that students do recall learning is often reduced to, like, facts and figures. You know- Uh-huh … you might think of, like, a, a high school history class that treats things like enslavement or abolition or patterns of immigration and racial violence as simply some dates and facts and figures and places without really sitting with the, the consequences and legacy of that.

And so I think what we see is that, uh, kind of at every turn, white students are often told, “We don’t talk about that,” or, “We talk about this in sanitized ways.” Um, which means that when they come to college, those are sort of the, the habits or ways of thinking that they bring with them.

Zak Foste: Sure. Um, if I could jump in, Rochelle.

Uh-huh. I love the… One of the examples Lauren brought up, I think, is one of the more illustrative ones to me, uh, of the, the whole, the whole premise. So, uh, y- to your question, like, what are, what are white students learning? I, I, I think there’s often an assumption that, like, the absence of explicit race related content or messages means that white students aren’t learning about race.

But white students- Mm … are absorbing and internalizing all sorts of messages and cues around them, often from really trusted authority figures like their parents- Yeah … their teachers, coaches, spiritual leaders, that, that present, like, really significant cues about how to think about race. And the example that Lauren provided, uh, it was an interview I conducted with a white student.

And, like, if you’re a qualitative researcher, there happen to be these interviews that, like, you just don’t forget. Like, you remember the experience of being in, in the interview, the context, the exchange. Sure. Um, and I remember this one very vividly. The, the, the young white student, he said something to the effect of, like- In our high school, there was a, a cultural exchange program of sorts, like- Mm-hmm

where a, a student from our really affluent suburban school would go to the urban school down the road, no more than like 10 minutes away, uh, and they would spend a week there. And then the student from the urban school, read Black, usually Black student, would come to the suburban school and spend a week in that school.

And the takeaway that the schools wanted the children to take away was that, like, it’s just very different. They’re very different worlds. Mm-hmm. And that to me is like a really interesting way in which we see, uh, like racial boundaries and like racial distinctions between people and communities and schools and neighborhoods sort of s- solidified and internalized.

And that’s a, that to me, having interviewed so many of these students, is one of the really significant ways white students come to learn about race. They internalize the boundaries between their communities and their neighborhoods and their schools, and other people’s communities and neighborhoods and schools, which are coded often as undesirable, unsafe, unfamiliar.

Mm-hmm. Uh, versus white neighborhoods, which are safe, familiar, clean, uh, all sorts of racially coded language that, uh, as you interviewed these students, routinely came up in the description of, of where they grew up. And, and that to me is like one of the really significant ways that white students, uh, internalize some of this.

Raechele Pope: Sure. What’s interesting, I’m hearing some of that same language, um, even if the students aren’t in these, um, wealthy suburban institutions. Yeah. If they are in a city too, they also are in an envi- um, a, um, a racially diverse city- Mm-hmm … and yet their school is not. They’re learning- Mm-hmm … and producing- Mm-hmm

some of the same messages. Now- Mm-hmm … one other thing, and you know, um, I don’t think we talked about this much, that white students, um, have, you know, some, maybe some of the assumption is that white students don’t learn about being white. They learn about other people. Mm-hmm. They learn about white in more hidden ways.

We don’t talk about it, and they don’t learn-

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm …

Raechele Pope: that they have a race. They think other people do. Yeah. And then the second one is, do they learn about racism? Mm. Which is different, race and racism. Do they learn about that? Did that come out in your conversations?

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm

Zak Foste: The, I can start here and then Lauren, if you wanna add on.

Sure. I, I think, um, I think one of the important pieces that strikes me about this part of the book is, uh, white students could recount to you when asked in an interview about the racial composition of their neighborhood or their school, “Oh, yeah, it was all white.” Mm-hmm. But it was almost said in like a matter-of-fact way that that’s, that’s just the way it is, and it’s the natural order of things, right?

Like, uh, it wasn’t remarkable, right? It’s actually very unremarkable. Mm-hmm. Uh, now, if you were to ask the same question probably of the one Black student in their school, they would, they would likely not give you the same answer, right? Right. Mm-hmm. They would likely talk about the heightened nature of whiteness of that space.

Um, so that is sort of the irony. I think that’s some of the stuff we start to talk about in the, the college context is like how do we get white- Yeah … students to actually reflect back on. Uh-

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm …

Zak Foste: that when they have some dif- if we were like lean into our student development training, right? Sure. Like, how do we get them- Yeah

to hold that out as an object of critique and recognize, uh, now that they have some distance from it, how racially segregated their community was, and that it wasn’t- Mm-hmm … by happenstance, and that it wasn’t just by sheer luck. Um- Right. The extent to which they talked about actual racism, especially in their pre-college years, uh, I think Lauren hit on this, very rarely.

I mean, for all the uproar about the indoctrination of like young white minds in K-12 education, you know, I, I remember one, one young woman said, “You know, we would learn about the Trail of Tears. We would talk about it for maybe five minutes, and then we would move on. We would all just say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was bad, right?’

And then we would move on.”

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm.

Zak Foste: Um, there was, there was rarely space for, I think, students to sit with, as we talk about the enormity of sort of like the historical terror imposed by white supremacy- Mm-hmm … on communities of color. And to Lauren’s point, reducing it to content mastery of like memorizing dates- Yeah

facts, and figures.

Raechele Pope: Right.

Lauren Irwin: Which I think that means that our white students aren’t recognizing the patterns when we see things like systemic police violence or, um, why are communities racially segregated, thinking about redlining. When every, when instances of racism are treated as blips of, that happen to be, I don’t know, shaped by race, but mostly discounting the role of race-

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm

Lauren Irwin: uh, and racism by positioning it as solely like a historical fact in the past. There are really big missed opportunities to see the continuity or to think about this as a system- Mm-hmm. Yeah … as racism. Um, and so I think all of those things, um, work together to make it all seem unremarkable and- Mm-hmm … kind of just the way things are.

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm.

Raechele Pope: Right. So then what, what becomes really, um, interesting for me is that, um, as, as I read the book, I found myself thinking that colleges Assume. Those of us who are doing this work, those of us who are working in all sorts of roles, we assume that we’re disrupting the student’s previous experience.

And your book really- Mm-hmm … points out that it’s something different. We’re not disrupting the student’s racial learning or earlier racial learning. You’re saying that higher education is often reproducing it. We’re giving them the same thing that they got, um, in their pr- um, prior education. Mm-hmm. So what surprised you most about that or concerned you most about that as your research unfolded?

Mm-hmm

Zak Foste: Uh, yeah, and I, you know, I think we always offer these as, like, loving critiques of higher ed, right? And, and the folks doing the works, right? So when we offer the critiques about campus housing, for instance, the, the, the folks right now on our campuses working move-in are some of the hardest working, most dedicated folks to, to student success that I know.

Um- Mm-hmm … so our critiques are much more structural and institutional th- th- that we offer. But, um, you know, one of them that Lauren and I often, I think, reflect on is, so we talked about how white students learn about race via sort of, like, racial boundaries and making clear distinctions. Not to be overly reductionist, but I would say between white spaces and Black spaces.

Mm-hmm. And I think it’s worth noting that throughout the book, it is very clear that Blackness plays an outsized role in their racial imaginations, right? Mm-hmm. They are often, when talking about other neighborhoods, talking, or other schools or other communities, where to go, where not to go, where it’s safe, where it’s unsafe, Blackness is almost always invoked as the, the reference point to where they know.

Mm-hmm. So the, I think one of the pieces that is, like, strikingly similar to us on, on, on campus life de- despite the intentions of disrupting it is, is campus housing. And so we have a whole chapter on campus housing, uh, and the, the ways in which white students and students of color often experience residential environments that are very similar to the racially segregated landscape of their pre-college years, right?

Mm-hmm. So, uh, for listeners who work on sort of, like, residential campuses, this may be familiar to you, but we typically would hear that on any given campus, um, there was a residence hall known as the white dorm or the dorm that was built, in their words, the white dorm. The white dorm was built for, uh, l- largely affluent white students, and it was almost all white students who lived there.

And if you talk to the students of color who did live there, they felt an, like an outsized sense of surveillance and suspicion about moving through the space, that they couldn’t possibly live in the space. Uh, uh, all sorts of sort of subtle raci- racist sort of harassment and tropes that flirted around the building about their very presence there.

Um, and, and, and then simultaneously, a number of buildings on campus that were known to house larger proportions of, of students of color, and that tended to be the more outdated buildings, the more institutionally neglected buildings. And I, I’m not, I’m not even kidding, across like three different campuses, you heard something to this effect of like, oh, those buildings are called the hood, the ghetto, or the slums.

Oh. And, uh, it creates a, a, a racial dynamic that is, like, remarkably consistent to what you see in students’ pre-college years. Uh, I think Lauren used the language earlier about creating sort of physical and emotional distance- Mm-hmm … between white students and students of color that, that are probably really at odds with, like, the stated aims that a lot of housing folks want to do, which is pro- Promote cross-racial engagement, increase racial consciousness.

But yeah, a real striking similarity in, in that sense.

Raechele Pope: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: Yeah And I think even in some of the spaces, to continue the housing example, where there is some degree of cross-racial interaction, I think the thing that stood out to us in conversations with campus administrators and staff who, um, right, are on the ground trying to make sure that meaningful interactions happen, that students are safe, right, that they can succeed academically, is sort of this assumption that continues to position students of color as the educators or, um, as those who will do the work of exposing white students and transforming their worldview just by happening to exist together.

Which often also, like, greatly discounts the humanity and needs of students of color as more than just, like, objects for white students’ learning. Mm-hmm. Um, and also then left campuses in really, I’ll say, sticky situations because of limitations of free speech. When racist slurs happen, when students of color felt unsafe, there were often real limits in what campuses could or couldn’t do to protect their safety.

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: Um, and so, you know, it was not uncommon that students of color, even those who lived in the, the white dorm, would recount spending much more time in the communities that were predominantly Black or predominantly students of color, um, because that’s where they experienced safety and joy and community, even when the facilities were not as nice or lacked some of those amenities.

Um, and so I think we’re often thinking about, you know, what are also the, the consequences for students of color when our campuses are positioned in this way, um, and sort of funneling white students through very different worlds.

Zak Foste: The, the example Lauren’s offering here I actually think is a really nice callback to our early discussion about the empty vessel hypothesis.

Mm-hmm. Because as we interviewed administrators, and not just, like, student affairs folks, but, like, senior level university officials, they would often brag about their campus housing operations and say, like, “It is the premier sort of laboratory to experiment and engage with difference, and to learn how to deal with people different than yourself.”

And that language of, like, dealing with others is such a low threshold, first of all. But, um-

Lauren Irwin: Yeah …

Zak Foste: this to me is the example of the empty vessel hypothesis. Like, a lot of these folks would champion housing as the place to do this work, but they didn’t account for the 18 years of really racially segregated homogenous communities that shaped white students’ sort of racial imaginations and expectations about who should occupy a space, who shouldn’t occupy a space, who has a right to space.

Um, and you just assume that you throw all these students in here together and you’re going to somehow, uh, create this productive sort of democratic space, uh, is misguided. That, that to me is actually a really concrete example of what we’re getting at with the, the empty vessel hypothesis.

Raechele Pope: Right. Mm-hmm.

And I could see that happening in academics as well. I talk to students- Sure … who, um, often say, “Well, I was the only white person in this African American studies class.” Mm-hmm. And for them, my response is, “Yay.” But-

Zak Foste: Yeah. …

Raechele Pope: why aren’t we channeling more students? There. Mm-hmm. You know, t- ’cause where’s that learning coming from- Mm

if we know it’s been pulled out of K-12 education- Mm-hmm … or, or things like that. Right. And I think about that experience. And, you know, I remember this back in the ’70s, and I’m still hearing it here in 2026, and that is, everybody else can play their music. Mm. And when I play my music- Mm … it’s automatically too loud, though if you open the door I can hear everybody else’s music too.

Yeah. And I think that that’s a message that we think is an old message, because doesn’t everybody listen to the same music now? Mm. You know, you see everybody- Mm … in their words, listening to rap, but not really, you know? No. And so it’s- Mm-hmm … still surveilled differently, and we’re hearing

Lauren Irwin: that.

Raechele Pope: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And, um, I think many of us on campus don’t know how to respond to that. How do- Mm-hmm Yeah … we create the environment before we put the students in that- Mm … um, can respond, disrupt, um, um, redirect. Um, we haven’t gotten really good at that part yet.

Zak Foste: Yeah.

Lauren Irwin: Yeah. Absolutely.

Raechele Pope: So I guess I, I, it, it seems like I, I, I asked this question before, but I, I think I wanna go into a little di- different- Yeah … level of this. That much of the book- Mm-hmm … then challenges these assumptions, you know, that- Mm-hmm … we’ve held in student affairs for years with the best of intentions. If white students aren’t beginning their racial learning when they arrive on campus, but instead are continuing patterns that began long before college, how do we then reshape the work of student affairs and educators and campus leaders?

How do we reshape- Mm-hmm … this work to help us better, um, create the kind of campus environment that we’ve been trying, and create the kind of student affairs leaders and educators- Mm … that we’ve been trying? Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm. I wish that I can start us off with this one. Um, I love this question because honestly, I feel like my responses and ideas vary day to day because I think there are a lot of sort of inroads or possibilities to start this work.

And I also want to acknowledge that the context in which we wrote this book and, and which this book is coming out, we’ve seen a really widespread dismantling of a lot of our campus DEI infrastructure of things like race conscious admissions, of even what can be taught in the classroom when it comes to race, gender, all these sorts of things.

And so I think that was, um, left us feeling often really challenged by like, well, what feels reasonable to offer? And so- Yeah … I think we tried to offer things that we thought and hoped might be evergreen, recognizing that folks are probably positioned with different degrees of agency- Yeah. Depending on- Yeah

who th- who they are and where they are.

Zak Foste: Yeah.

Lauren Irwin: Um, I think something that’s sitting really front of mind for me today, probably in part because I’m teaching, uh, like a org theory seminar for doctoral students this semester, is that our institutions and our systems are not inherently broken, right? They’re, they are always producing the outcomes that they were designed to produce.

Raechele Pope: Right.

Lauren Irwin: Um, and, and I think that that for me is a really uncomfortable recognition because that, it, I think it’s easy to say, “Well, our systems are broken. We should be doing something better.” I think we should be doing something different and better, and they’re operating in the ways that they were designed.

Um, and I’m also thinking- For better or worse. For better or worse, right. That’s right. Um-

Raechele Pope: These, they were designed- Right … this way.

Lauren Irwin: Right. With white, often white and affluent students in mind, often by folks who themselves at one point were white- Yes … and affluent students. And so we know that our, our pipelines into the field have changed and many of these practices endure.

Um, and so I think actually this is where we drew on a lot of your work. We were trying to think about, you know, what are the different levels where we can inspire or offer change? And so I think Zak and I are both folks with deep grounding into development theory, and so- Yeah … often come to thinking about how can we offer interventions with students?

How can we shift some of our own paradigms and thinking? Um- While also recognizing that those things might not inherently transform the system that is operating, uh, as it was designed. Um, so I think I’ll- I’m gonna offer a few low-level things here, and I’m sure we’ll continue back and forth with some of these.

I think for myself, and something I teach a lot in my master’s classes, is questioning who we think of as our ideal student or our target student in any space. I’ll speak for myself as a white person. When I was a master’s student and an entry-level practitioner, I once had a colleague very generously say, like, “Oh, in what ways are you assuming actually that the student entering our program is white and therefore hasn’t thought about these things versus maybe a Black student who probably has by virtue of white supremacy?”

And I think that is actually a really useful tool for us to begin to engage in, like, critical inquiry in our programs, policies, and offerings to think about, um, who is the student I’m imagining in this environment? In what ways does this benefit them? In what ways is a Black student, a low income student, a rural student, a queer student experience perhaps gonna be different?

Raechele Pope: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: Um, I think that’s one start. I think secondarily, which Zak had mentioned earlier, is, you know, in good student affairs, student development practice, how can we also recognize that ourselves and the students we work with have a lifetime of socialization, and inspire curiosity to reflect on those and not take those experiences for granted?

Mm-hmm. So asking about, you know, what were the compositions of your friendships in high school? Why do you think that came to be? You mentioned your neighborhood being relatively, like, homogenous. Why do you think that is? Um, what were the messages you received about that? I think kind of bringing a sense of curiosity to a lot of our work, both internal and with students, can, can be an important first step.

So there’s, I think there’s a lot more to say. I’m sure Zak has some ideas as well.

Zak Foste: Yeah, you know, uh, I think all three of us, uh, take, hold the field of student development theory dear, right? And, uh, a lot of the listeners of this podcast do too. And, you know, the old axiom of, like, meet students where they’re at has always been really important to the field, but I’m not sure we’ve always done that when thinking about how to engage white students.

And, and there’s a qualifier to that too, right? Like asking a first year assistant professor who’s a Black woman to meet white students where they’re at in their understanding of race is- Yeah … is really messy and problematic. So, uh, a lot of times, actually, I think these recommendations aren’t geared exclusively to white folks in higher ed.

But given the, like, absence of white role models in white students’ pre-college lives, I think it is important that it is often white faculty and staff who are, who are sort of, um, not just facilitating conversations, but generally, like, role modeling, uh- Role modeling ways of thinking and, and doing this stuff.

So, you know, like when we, we started off the conversation talking about how do white students learn about race? Well, one is they just internalize all these forms of silence that permeate primarily both their schools and their families in ways that tend to be really mutually reinforcing. And silence can do a lot of things, right?

Like, uh, there’s an account in the book, one of the more like really troublesome and, uh, gross racist accounts is where two young white men in a homeroom in a high school are reenacting the murder of George Floyd and making light of it. Mm-hmm. And the homeroom teacher doesn’t interrupt, and in fact, laughs.

Mm-hmm. And, and, and, and how consequential and pivotal that moment is to every white student in the room, uh, and their understanding of appropriate race talk and race discourse and how to, how, how… A- a- and the fact that no one in that account spoke up is equally tr- There’s all… You could unravel that in a million different ways, but that’s one way silence functions.

And there’s another way that silence functions where it’s like- A lot of the students in the study, some of the different studies have, um, like an emerging curiosity about race. Like, it’s tentative and it’s messy, but, uh, again, the timing of this was some of these interviews were done right around 2020, 2021.

So in that particular moment, uh, you know, they’d say we’d come home from high school, uh, and we’d turn on the news and, and s- the first thing instantly is Black Lives Matter. Mm-hmm. And I, I wish we had someone to process that with. I mean, these were students who essentially White kids who came of age during Black Lives Matter in, in, in, in, in, in the summer of George Floyd and, and, and, and Breonna Taylor and all that.

And so, um, th- there’s this really thoughtful account from one woman in the book, and she says, “You know, I kinda actually wish my parents would’ve talked to me about this stuff. I realize it’s tricky and it’s difficult, but I, I wish she would have, my parents would have, especially my mom.” And, and that account is always so telling to me because it, it says a couple things.

One, like, talking about race is tricky and messy, and that’s how it’s normalized, so you just sidestep it, and there’s this yearning for it.

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm.

Zak Foste: Uh, a- and that’s what I think is really interesting in the book is like we’re able to talk to White students and ask them to look, like, retrospectively at their childhood and adolescence.

Uh, a- and they can say that. Like, “Oh, I wish my mom would’ve sat me down about what I was seeing on TV.” And, and so to get, a really long-winded way of getting back to your question, but I think, uh, White faculty and staff have a unique role to play, an obligation to play. And this is not system-level change or structural-level change, but it is doing, like, individual day-to-day work of role modeling this stuff.

I mean, the, there was a woman in the book who recounts learning about the history of her town as a sundown town. Uh-huh. Because she had learned, um, from someone in her community that up until, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, there’s a sign that still existed at the edge of her town that said, “If you’re Black, turn back.”

Raechele Pope: Mm-hmm.

Zak Foste: Uh, that could have been a really pivotable developmental moment for her own sort of racial consciousness and racial awakening. She brings it to a teacher in her high school, and the teacher’s response, “We’re not gonna talk about that. That’s not acceptable to talk about.” And it shuts down any curiosity.

Mm-hmm. And so, uh, I realize this is a very individual level change, but I, I, I do think opening up those spaces, and people are differently situated. What you can do in Kansas or Oklahoma or Arkansas is really different than, than Minnesota or Massachusetts or New York or Califor- So w- we, we recognize people are situated differently.

But I think knowing the context of how pervasive that silence is, and that silence isn’t just an absence of something, like it’s doing something to White students, ought to, ought to direct us to, like, what are, what are our spheres of sort of influence.

Raechele Pope: Right. It’s really powerful how silence, um, teaches.

You, we’re not always comfortable- Yeah … with what it teaches, but to- Yeah … believe that silence is neutral. And I’m gonna get back to neutral-

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm …

Raechele Pope: in just a minute. But it’s, um, but that silence teaches, and that we can’t, um, escape that. I was thinking about something Lauren said, um, in, uh, earlier in that conversation where she talked about this recognition.

You both talked about this individual level, and that is a, an important level of change. It’s not the last level of change, but- Yeah … it’s an important level of change. Yeah. And I remember saying once to a colleague who asked me to look at something that they were writing about race.

Lauren Irwin: Mm.

Raechele Pope: And so I just came back and said, “Who, who’s your audience?”

And they said, “Well, everybody.” Mm-hmm. I said, “No, you’ve written this for white people.” Mm. Which is fine. Mm. But you gotta label it as such. This was- Mm … when you’re talking about race in this way, and people need to know this, well, there are groups of us who do know this, so you’re not talking to us. And they were very offended by that, um- Okay

that feedback. But it’s, it’s similar in this, and Lauren said- Mm … we have to start with what we know, and who do I see as the students that I’m teaching? Mm-hmm. So I thought that was really important. Mm. So we started to talk about this, you know, and moving, the, so what is the institutional change?

Institutions- Yeah … like to take on this, um, belief that they are neutral.

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm.

Raechele Pope: And so what… And by neutral, um, they mean, you know, we’re not for or against anything. I, and I- Right … I really think- Mm-hmm … we can be better than that. So whether- Yeah … intentionally or unintentionally, colleges and universities really communicate these powerful message, sometimes- Mm-hmm

through the silence that you talked about, Zak. Mm-hmm. Mm. And they, um, communicate these powerful messages about race, about racism- Mm … and everyday campus life. So- Mm-hmm … let’s, what responsibility do institutions have for disrupting racial learning?

Lauren Irwin: Mm. Yeah. Um,

Raechele Pope: rather than simply reproducing it. Yeah. And what would real disruption look like?

Mm.

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Irwin: I think our, our work in this book was really heavily influenced by some of the more recent work from sociologists like Victor Ray, who talk about the idea of racialized organizations, right? Or this, this notion that organizations are anything but neutral- Mm-hmm … especially when it comes to race and racism.

Um, and so I think that, you know, naive or Pollyanna as it sounds, I think the answer is absolutely our institutions have a responsibility. And I also wanna recognize that our institutions themselves are not, like, personified agentic beings. They’re comprised by people at all different levels with different degrees of influence and power and agency.

And so I recognize it takes a lot of immense, um, coalition building, change, culture change to affect some of that change. I think the area or maybe place of action that feels really front of mind for me today, um, is thinking about how we can use our multiple sources of data on campus that already exist, whether that’s campus climate data, whether it’s things around student success and retention, whether it’s things around resource allocation, you know, for Greek orgs or student orgs, um, and thinking about two things in particular.

One, where can we be, uh, internally critical? And I mean that, like, just with a critical- Yeah … curious eye about who is overrepresented where. Um, what are spaces that maybe have particularly high rates of success for students of color, or particularly low, right? Where can we sort of look for patterns? Um, and second, then follow the money, follow the resources with that.

And so it makes me think and wonder, you know, if we see spaces that are particularly prioritizing- Joy and safety and community for students of color, how can we continue to resource that? And simultaneously, if we’re seeing spaces, programs, entities that are predominantly white remaining predominantly white, perhaps, um, I think Zak sometimes uses the language of particularly greedy of students’ time, right?

Sort of insulate them, whether it’s particular majors or organizations. Where can we be curious about how that is happening and, and dig a little bit deeper? Mm-hmm. I don’t think that there’s a really simple one-size-fits-all answer. But thinking about how can we disrupt some of the really easy forms of closure that can happen that ensure that a white student’s experience on c- a college campus is relatively similar and somewhat homogenous, much like their pre-college experience.

So that’s where I would start today. Mm. Um, and I think some of that comes and is inspired by some of Estela Bensimon’s work, thinking about sort of, you know, equity oriented inquiry, um, using data that we have to sort of pursue equity on our campuses.

Raechele Pope: Sure.

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm.

Zak Foste: I’m, uh, I’m reminded, uh, Rochelle, of your, your language of like institutions wanting to be neutral or espousing- Mm-hmm

you know, commitments to remain neutral. You know, I, I think one of the takeaways hopefully from the book is like it’s often those commitments to, to race neutrality that produce deeply racialized outcomes on campus. Mm-hmm. Right? So-

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm …

Zak Foste: um, throughout the book we draw a lot on, um, Elijah Anderson’s work.

He’s a sociologist, and his work on the white space, and particularly like the, the impact on Black people and communities and other communities of color in the white space. Again, heightened surveillance, uh, being an unexpected guest, uh, being a provisional member of a community, in this context like an academic community or a residence hall.

Um, but in the book we profile a couple different situations where like supposedly race neutral policies lead to deeply racialized white spaces, one being the housing example. So- Uh-huh … how do you get an all white residence hall? Mm. Or as the community called it, the white dorm. Well, you set up a system where, uh, when s- in order to pick, get it to the top of the lottery to pick your residence hall, you have to put your housing deposit down first, uh, and, and without any chance of getting the deposit back.

So if you’re a, a relatively affluent student who knows early they’re going to college and doesn’t care if they lose, uh, 300 bucks or whatever the deposit is ’cause it’s non-refundable if you don’t go to that campus, you skyrocket up. And you can afford the price point that is $2,000, $3,000 different, um, from the other residence halls on campus.

That’s a cons- you know, a seemingly race neutral policy, but it leads to the construction of the white dorm that sits at the center of campus relative to all the other buildings. Sure. Um, and you know, there was an administrator we interviewed and, and they said, “I would, I, I would actually love to create a…”

Now, this was 2021, 2020.

Raechele Pope: Sure.

Zak Foste: But yeah, 2021 probably. Uh, “I would love to create a Black themed LLC Living Learning Community, but I know I’ll be on the front page of the paper as a raging racist and asked to resign, uh, from my leadership role. Um, so that’s one. The other one that we profile in the book, uh, is a student who gets access to a really exclusive leadership club in the College of Business.

And so he arrives on campus before anyone else and gets access to all these wonderful resources from the really well-resourced College of Business, uh, and notes that the, the pre-college program is actually whiter than the College of Business itself, which is already super white. Mm-hmm. And, and that, that pipeline from high school to the pre-college business program sets him on a trajectory of resources and networks and communities- Mm-hmm

um, that have already sort of, to use this language, like greedy organizations, isolated him from the rest of campus. Uh, and so multiple ways in which sort of like race neutral policies or programs produce deeply inequitable contexts that, that, that recreate the white spaces that mirror their pre-college experiences.

Um, and, and I think we talk about in the book like picking up an audit or as Lauren talks about, being curious of the ways in which these race neutral policies seemingly produce these types of outcomes.

Raechele Pope: Right. Mm-hmm. And it’s almost as if, you know, like for our lis- for our folks who are listening to this, there’s giant finger quotes around race neutral policies.

Mm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, they just aren’t, when examined deeply enough and- Right … who they disadvantage. Yes. And they may be also disadvantaging white students, but p- typically- Mm-hmm … um, less, um, affluent, um- Right. Mm-hmm … um, less resourced students- Mm-hmm. Yeah … in the exact same way. So it’s, it’s fascinating.

Mm-hmm. And we’re also talking about this in a, a political time. Mm-hmm. When, you know, when you were talking to folks around 2021, we were still in that moment, um- Mm-hmm … um, or in the most, at that time, what was the most recent racial reckoning that was happening- Yeah. Yep … in the country following George Floyd, and we were…

and campuses were making big promises and really- Mm-hmm … at a place where we could really examine these things and to start talking about them. Mm-hmm. And now everyone’s afraid to touch them. Watching campuses back out of what few st- um, backtrack the few steps they made forward in looking at some of these things.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And now they don’t even wanna have those discussions. Um- So, yeah. Um, th- so let me ask this question. Yeah. I want you two to dream for a few minutes.

Lauren Irwin: Okay.

Raechele Pope: If student affairs professionals, faculty members, and institutional leaders across our, um, campuses truly embrace the ideas in this book- Mm-hmm

what did you, what do you hope would look different on our campuses- Mm-hmm … five or 10 years from now? What would we see?

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Raechele Pope: Now, and I know we do have to dream, ’cause we have to step out of-

Zak Foste: Yeah. Right …

Raechele Pope: uh, this leadership from Washington right now, um- Mm-hmm … stepping on campuses in ways that it hadn’t, but dream with us.

Zak Foste: Yeah.

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm.

Zak Foste: Yeah. I appreciate you mentioning that because, you know, I think a concern writing the book was, like, we don’t wanna appear out of touch with the realities of practitioners on the ground, right? Mm-hmm. Like, every day when we were writing this book, there was seemingly, uh, something that came from Washington or state level restrictions on DEI- Mm-hmm

CRT. So y- you know, we’re constantly going back and forth with our editor of, like, how much should we a- a- address this, right? While still helping the book, you know, live beyond this particular moment, which I think we both remain hopeful will, in some fashion, pass. Um, I, I think for me, uh, I hope that, uh, what, what this book might encourage, you know, 10 years t- or how it will live out 10 years down the line is a- A, a deeper recognition that we, we can’t compartmentalize students’ lives.

And this could really go to the study and the support of any student group on campus. But, like, that students, you cannot compartmentalize them into their four or five years on a college campus. That, uh, that, that they come to us, again, to draw on some student development theory language, having been socialized by very trusted authority figures, people who they care about deeply, who they have deep social ties to, parents, coaches, peers, teachers, spiritual leaders, you name it.

Uh, and, and we have to understand all the ways in which folks are socialized and conditioned to think about these issues before they ever get here, and how do we put our work in context of that. Uh, I mean, this book often reminds me of, like, when I was an RA and I was a 21-year-old at Western Illinois University wanting to do a one-off program in my lounge for white students on white racial privilege.

Those one-off programs are likely not super helpful when you’re going against the tide of, as, as Lauren talked about, 18, 19 years of really, really powerful-

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm …

Zak Foste: uh, socialization. Uh-huh. And so I, I hope that’s one offering to the field, is just to continue to think about how students’ lives are really complex.

Uh- Mm-hmm … they, they come to campus with all sorts of ideas and perspectives. Uh, and it is our role to engage that and help hopefully trouble that and hold that out for critique, and to bring that into, to, to conversation. Um- Be- because I, I, one of the, I guess, you know, like we do get really, uh, pessimistic at times in this moment.

But a lot of those students that I’ve interviewed at least, and I’m not sure, Lauren can speak to it too, but like, uh, for a lot of them, there is like an emerging curiosity, or there was at this time, as you mentioned, Rochelle, like, uh, that racial reckoning. Like an emerging curiosity. What does it mean to be white?

How am I part of a system? What do I need to be doing and thinking about differently? But they, they, rarely did they find productive outlets to process that curiosity, uh, to more meaningful sort of consciousness raising and ways to live it out. And- Mm-hmm. And we talk about this towards the end of the book, but, like, that was the one way that their higher ed context did differ from their pre-college context.

Like, their pre-college- Mm … classroom learning was really sanitized. I think Lauren referred to it as, like, dates, facts and figures. But the students in the study, they took the African American history class, right, Rochelle? That you mentioned. They took a gender studies class, a sociology of race and ethnicity class, and they reported really transformative moments- Mm

uh, that were a huge departure. And, and still they then, they left the classroom and returned to worlds that were primarily white, white peers, white sororities and fraternities, white clubs and organizations, white residence halls. Mm-hmm. Um- Mm-hmm … so I, uh, yeah. I’ll, I’ll leave it there and let Lauren jump in, but…

Lauren Irwin: Sure. Um, when I think about higher ed five years from now, there’s two things that I hope are more ever present across our campuses, and those two things I think are related. A sense of, um, humility and also, like, a comfort- Mm … with, uh, things being unfinished or unsolved. Mm. And-

Zak Foste: Yeah …

Lauren Irwin: I think the piece of humility feels really a friend of mine, because I think so many of us end up in higher ed after decades of education, of having to justify whether you’re a faculty member or staff member, that what you’re doing is the best and the best use of resources, and the one, you know, capital, the capital R right thing.

Um, the best thing. And I think that that can foreclose a lot of, a lot of opportunities for us to say, “Well, I don’t know, maybe something could be different. Maybe something could be better. Maybe there’s a chance to learn, um, or think differently.” And I also think that that’s incredibly vulnerable to recognize that we might not have the one right answer or be doing the one right thing or the best thing.

Um, which also then might mean that we don’t quickly have another best answer. And I think that this is especially true when we’re thinking about sort of the idealized hopes that we have of college campuses, that folks engage across difference, particularly racial difference, have better understanding and appreciation for racial diversity, knowledge of racism, like ability to interact with others.

That sort of stuff is Like not just lifelong work, but not easily accomplished in one conversation, like Zak mentioned. Um, is not just, you know, accomplished through a single friendship or roommate relationship. Um, that it is inherently unfinished, ongoing, requires a lot of humility. And so, um, I hope and wonder if there are ways that all of us in the system can continue to role model some of those things and help foster that in students, while also recognizing that I know that that feels incredibly hard to do when we’re needing to justify resources and our- Yeah

survival. Like I am not- Yeah … naive to that. Um, and I wonder where the pockets in our staff meetings, in our divisional meetings, in our classrooms where that might be feasible.

Zak Foste: Mm.

Lauren Irwin: Um, yeah, maybe that feels naive, but that’s what gives me hope and what I think I often am trying to role model or aspire to.

Raechele Pope: Yeah, I don’t think it sounds naive at all, and I think that we, I- it sounds, um, naive in the sense that we don’t like to dream anymore you know? Like- … how can we do this? And that it needs to be big, and- Yeah … sometimes it’s the simple models of asking the questions in the meeting.

Zak Foste: Mm-hmm.

Raechele Pope: You know? Yeah. This is fascinating to me, and there’s so much more to talk about, and I think we’re really coming- Yeah

towards the end. So I just wanna ask, you know, at Student Affairs Now we often ask- Mm-hmm … our guests the question that says, “Why don’t you reflect personally?” You know, as a- Yeah … scholar, as an educator, as an author, what is the one question, I’m gonna, you know, relate this to race and higher education, or this work- Mm-hmm

that you’re still wrestling with- Yeah … or that we hope our field will continue exploring?

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I can go first. I think- Yeah … uh, a tension, something that I continue to grapple with is if we know that diversity interactions across difference are meaningful, what is the line between doing that meaningfully versus tokenizing folks?

I think- Yeah … I sit all the time with the reality that we know racism and White supremacy means that White folks and folks of color experience the world and institutions differently. And also not wanting to tokenize or presume and fit students of color into particular boxes, or White students into particular boxes.

Oh. And so, um, I think when it comes to hiring, when it thinks to composition of groups, when it comes to all sorts of things, I w- I- I lack easy answers for thinking about what is that line between meaningful represent- representation and diversity that isn’t tokenizing but is humanizing. Um, and yeah, humanizing.

I’ll leave it there.

Raechele Pope: Yeah. Thanks. Lauren?

Zak Foste: This is how I know Lauren and I think alike, but also didn’t coordinate our answers before this ’cause that was exactly where my mind went- Oh my gosh. … as I was thinking about today. Um, you know, like it’s like- We do talk about

Lauren Irwin: that a lot.

Zak Foste: Yeah, yeah. I mean, ’cause if a byproduct of the book, right, is like, okay, White students live really racially segregated lives, the alternative is- Mm-hmm

they live more racially integrated lives. But- Mm-hmm … I’m constantly thinking about whether it’s writing or in practice at my own university, like how do you do that without, to sort of what Lauren said, uh, turn students of color into a form of racial capital that White students can later exchange for value, right?

Like, oh yeah, I, I was in this really multiracial student organization, and now I can put it on an application to law school or to grad school- Mm-hmm … or it’ll, it’ll benefit me later. And that’s often where I feel sort of uncertain or, or nervous about that direction because it typically isn’t like a democratic or mutually beneficial relationship.

It, it’s actually usually an uneven relationship where, you know, White students benefit from the presence of racial diversity as a, as, as Lauren really wonderfully said, as a, as a means of- Uh, uh, of learning and development. So I, I, I’m often really struggling with that of like how do, how do you do this work in a way that benefits all students and produces really meaningful cross-racial interaction without reducing students of color on the residence hall floor or in the classroom or in the student club to like the source of learning, uh, for white students?

And, and I … It is a ongoing, I think, tension in this work.

Raechele Pope: Yeah.

Lauren Irwin: Mm-hmm.

Raechele Pope: And I think you’re right. I think we do know that the relationship, um, can be really unequal. And at, at the same time we have literature that tells us that if you wanna reduce prejudice um, be with people who are different than you.

Zak Foste: Yep.

Yep.

Raechele Pope: And so that there is a benefit, but it’s an unequal, um- Yeah … benefit. Yeah.

Zak Foste: Yeah.

Raechele Pope: Look- Yeah … we could talk about this all day, and I would. You know I would sit here and just talk with you all-

Lauren Irwin: We would too. Yeah.

Zak Foste: Yeah, right, right.

Raechele Pope: So but we have to, we have to stop. Perhaps we’ll have to have another conversation about this- Yeah

and another conversation on student affairs now. But I wanna thank you both. Um, Zak Foste and, um, Lauren Irwin, thank you for joining us here today. Um- Sure … thanks for sharing your scholarship and your thoughtful reflections. Congratulations on the publication of Disrupting White Noise, Challenging Beliefs About Race on Campus.

You know, listeners, I know that you need to pick this book up and, and check it out. I think you’ll come away with, um, much to think about, not only regarding how white students learn about race, but also how colleges and universities can more intentionally create educational environments that challenge rather than reproduce the existing beliefs and assumptions.

I also wanna thank our sponsors for today’s episode, Evolve. Given the current context of higher education, we need to invest in leaders with the capacity and the capability to transform their institutions and the future of higher education. The Evolve Institute for Higher Education Leadership offers four leadership coaching journeys tailored to four different leadership levels.

Each is a three-month journey that includes individual and group coaching, plus a curated curriculum of short asynchronous video modules. We also offer Evolve for leadership teams. So if you’re ready to evolve your leadership voice, visit evolveinstitute.com to learn more. Before we close, I’d like to give a special shout-out to our production assistant, Nat Ambrosey.

We say this every week, and we mean it every week. Nat is the person behind the scenes who makes Student Affairs Now look and sound great every week, and we are so grateful for her creativity, expertise, and all she does to bring these conversations to life. Thank you, Nat. And of course, thank you to you, our listeners.

We love the support for these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to our podcast, YouTube, and weekly newsletter announcing each new episode and more. So if you’re so inclined, you can also leave us a five-star review. I’m Raechele Pope. Thanks again to Doctors Irwin and Foste, and thank you to everyone who’s watching and listening.

Until next time, thanks for the work that you do to support students and to strengthen higher education. Hey, make it a great week.

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We’ve Been Trying to Meet Students Where They Are, But We’ve Been Wrong About Where That Is | Irwin & Foste