Meeting students where they are is a common, well-intentioned refrain in higher education. This sentiment is not only catchy but reflects the field’s commitment and enduring mission to treat students as individuals and to recognize and support their holistic learning and development (ACE, 1949; ACPA/NASPA, 2015). In fact, most graduate programs in higher education and student affairs feature courses such as student development theory, among others, to ensure educators have the tools to recognize and understand where students are (Torres et al., 2019). Our new book, Disrupting White Noise: Challenging Beliefs About Race on Campus, argues we have been going about it all wrong (Foste & Irwin, 2026); at least when it comes to white students.
Drawing on nearly a decade of research with white college students, staff, and administrators across many campuses and functional areas, we argue that higher education educators and institutions frequently rely on what we term the ‘empty vessel hypothesis’ (Foste & Irwin, 2026). The empty vessel hypothesis falsely asserts that white college students arrive to college with no knowledge about race, racism, or the racial world. Thus, white students are simply lacking knowledge and content, and through exposure to and engagement with diverse peers and knowledge, they will experience transformation. We do not discount the ways that white students are often ignorant of or dismiss the realities of racism. However, we argue that such beliefs result from a lifetime of socialization, not merely from a lack of knowledge. Put simply, white students are anything but empty vessels and continuing to treat them as such undermines campus diversity efforts.
In order to meaningfully engage white students around the realities of race, racism, and the racial world, educators must acknowledge the lifetime of knowledge and socialization white students have about race. Scholars have demonstrated how white students develop understandings of themselves as white people (Helms, 1998; Linder, 2015), the value of diversity courses and cross-racial interactions for understandings of race and diversity (Bowman & Weaver, 2023; Cabrera, 2019), as well as the ways that many campus environments often privilege white students’ experiences and comfort (Cabera, 2019; Cabrera et al., 2016; Foste & Irwin, 2023). Yet, these bodies of work rarely consider, or deeply engage with, white students’ pre-college experiences and knowledge about race and racism. This disconnect has undermined campus efforts to foster student development, diversity, and inclusion. To illustrate, we offer a few examples.
The white students we interviewed regularly offered stories and examples that indicated their keen awareness of race and the racial world. Luke, for example, shared an early memory about race from his time running cross-country:
So, we would run obviously around the school, we’d run basically within five, six miles of the school, and we’d run through the poorest parts of our neighborhood, you could get really poor, but for the most part, lower middle class to poor. And then I’d be done with my run, and then I would get in my car, drive 10 minutes, and I’d be in a gated community, that’s just the difference. And of course, gated communities are more white, almost all white, than the poorer neighborhoods are almost all Black and Latino.
Luke’s experiences running cross-country allowed him to observe the stark patterns of racial segregation in his community. Further, most white students recounted stories parents and other authoritative adults shared about these racial boundaries–namely, what communities, cities, or places were safe and which were dangerous, undesirable, and to be avoided. Such messages usually reflected white adults’ beliefs about the relative desirability of white spaces and the demonization of predominantly Black spaces and communities (Anderson, 2015). In another example JT recalled the messages he received about race and space:
[P]eople just say things like, “Oh, there’s a lot of crime in that neighborhood. That neighborhood isn’t a very good neighborhood, the houses in that neighborhood don’t look all that great. The people from there aren’t very nice.” And like you go through and it’s just like, “This looks like my white suburb except for the people walking outside.”
Students like Luke and JT received a lifetime of messages before coming to college.
When many white students come to college, they often find themselves in various racially homogenous spaces that were all or mostly white. Despite the hope that the college campus could function as a new environment that uniquely fostered cross-racial interactions and appreciation of difference, we found that many white students were tracked into predominantly white pathways. Although many white students chose meaningful experiences, such as specific majors (e.g., Music, Nursing, Teacher Education), particular residence halls, and co-curricular activities (e.g., Sorority Life, leadership programs), that were relatively isolated and predominantly white, these pathways were institutionally resourced and well supported. Campuses offered lucrative, well-resourced pathways for students’ academic, professional, and social development, effectively creating divergent social worlds.
Often, these divergent pathways begin with selecting on-campus housing. At many campuses, students selected housing on a first-come, first-served basis as soon as they paid their housing application fee. Melissa, a white woman RA, explained how one residence hall on her campus came to be known as the “white dorm”:
[The white dorm] is one of the newer halls on campus, and so it ends up getting filled the fastest. And that also means that when we open the housing selection, statistically, the [students] that end up getting their [housing] placements first are the ones who went through admissions much earlier. And they’re predominantly white, affluent folks from good K through 12 [schools] and have that support system. And so racially, with Pollard, the folks that get placed there, it’s predominantly white. And it’s predominantly affluent.
Next, students began taking classes and getting to know peers in their major. Several students at one campus spoke about their experiences in the College of Music, which was housed in Stevenson Hall. Several students referred to Stevenson Hall as “Stevenson High” because of the ways it felt like their high school – small, close-knit, and predominantly white. As one student explained,
The College of Music is small, and people call it Stevenson High instead of Stevenson
Hall, because it does in some ways feel like high school. Seeing the same people every
day. I wasn’t aware that pretty much everyone in the music therapy program looks like
- It’s white women, pretty much only.
Further, due to the intensity of the music curriculum, music majors reported having few opportunities to take courses at other colleges or to interact with students outside their major. In effect, her college experience mirrored the small, mostly white nature of her high school.
Many students also sought to get involved on campus through clubs, leadership programs, and Greek-letter social organizations. One white woman spoke about how joining a sorority isolated her from the rest of campus, sharing: “Living in the sorority…I feel like kept me from campus, because I was like, ‘I have food. I have a study room. Everything. Printer.’ I was like ‘I don’t really…’ I didn’t really need to leave that much.” Because of the all-encompassing nature of her sorority experience, she recognized that she had few opportunities to engage in conversations about Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd with her mostly white sorority peers. She explained,
[Black Lives Matter] wasn’t talked about, but I would go to campus and study last year.Because I would go to the union occasionally or the library. I feel like there were… not
posters just saying Black Lives Matter, but ways to get involved and do things.
Yet, as she got more involved with and eventually moved into her sorority, she had fewer reasons and opportunities to branch out and leave.
Contrast these relatively isolated and homogenous pathways with staff members’ enduring beliefs about the ways college campuses could foster diversity. Many administrators we interviewed referred to campus residence halls as “laboratories” for student learning and for interactions across differences. These views were, in part, informed by assumptions that white students had never engaged across difference or considered race and identity–or that white students were empty vessels. Cindy, a white woman and senior administrator, offered the following:
So when students live in the hall, it’s just that’s such a great opportunity to really get to know people who are different. Again, we have a large population of people who come from areas that don’t have that opportunity. And so living in the halls, I mean, there is nothing like learning about somebody when you live with them, or you live near them. I mean, it’s the best chance to do that.
Despite college’s promise as a new environment uniquely poised to foster meaningful interactions across difference, the examples we shared illustrated how that reality is far from the truth. Rather, here, and in our book, Disrupting White Noise (Foste & Irwin, 2026), we have made three interrelated arguments. First, white students come to college with a lifetime of knowledge about the racial world–fostered through their racially segregated communities, schools, and peer networks. Second, colleges often extend and reinforce, rather than disrupt, white students’ pre-college environments and experiences. And third, colleges and educators often assume white students lack knowledge of and awareness of the racial world–or treat white students as empty vessels.
By considering and engaging white students’ pre-college experiences and knowledge, college campuses and educators can better meet white students where they are. Baxter Magolda (2002) spoke about the value of being ‘good company’, or thoughtful guides and partners, in students’ educational and developmental journeys. We argue that understanding and working to disrupt the empty vessel hypothesis is a key way educators can be good company for all students.
One way to meet students where they are is by helping them critically examine the people, places, and experiences that powerfully influenced their perspectives. For instance, many white students likely see the racially insulated and homogeneous composition of their neighborhoods and K-12 schools as happenstance or natural, rather than a product of racist policies and ideologies. Directly engaging all students, especially white students, on the concrete particulars of their pre-college lives has the potential to open up new ways of thinking about historical and contemporary forms of racism. By helping students hold their experiences and knowledge out of reflection and critique, students can examine authoritative people, places, and experiences as objects worthy of critique, rather than being subject to their influence (Baxter Magolda, 2008; Kagan, 1982). Gabby provides one example of how this can be done. She described an opportunity to learn about the historical and contemporary significance of redlining practices. She explained:
I remember just being so shocked about redlining. Well, because we discussed in that class about how a lot of a family’s wealth just comes from their ability to sell their house. And so not only is that where most racial minorities do currently live—in a former redlined housing area—but also the reason they probably can’t move out of that area is because the value of their house is not appreciated as nearly as much as white people’s houses have. And so that’s why they have less good access to education and just decreases their opportunities.
While Gabby benefitted from access to new knowledge about race in the form of redlining policies, this knowledge was effective and relevant because it prompted her to connect it to patterns she observed in her home community, while she reconsidered the messages she received about racial segregation. To meet students where they are, we must recognize and help them engage with the lifetime of knowledge they hold.
Reflection questions:
- What assumptions do I hold about the knowledge college students, especially white students, (do not) have about race and the racial world? How do these assumptions shape the relationships, programs, and initiatives I support?
- What opportunities do I have, or could I have, to help students engage with their pre-college experiences and socialization to race?
- How do aspects of campus life potentially recreate predominantly white spaces? Or reinforce white students’ pre-college learning about race?
- How might all students–white and racially minoritized students–benefit from policies and practices that challenge the empty vessel hypothesis?
Author Biography
Lauren N. Irwin (She/her) is an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She researches whiteness, racialization, and equity in higher education. She can be reached at lirwin6@utk.edu.
Zak Foste (He/him) is an associate professor of higher education and chair of the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department at the University of Kansas. His research examines issues of diversity and equity in higher education, with particular attention to how whiteness structures college and university campuses. He can be reached at zfoste@ku.edu. Together, they are the authors of the newly released Harvard Education Press book: Disrupting White Noise: Challenging Beliefs About Race on Campus.
References
American Council on Education (ACE). (1949). The student personnel point of view (Rev. ed.). Author. https://www.naspa.org/report/student-personnel-point-of-view-1949
Anderson, E. A. (2015). The white space. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(1), 10–21, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214561306.
Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2002). Helping students make their way to adulthood: Good company for the journey. About Campus, 6(6), 2-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/108648220200600602
Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2008). Three elements of self-authorship. Journal of College Student Development 49(4), 269-284. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.0.0016
Bowman, N. A. & Weaver, K. E. (2023). The impact of diversity experiences on undergraduate student outcomes. In C. Baik & E. R. Kahu (Eds.), Research Handbook on the Student Experience in Higher Education (pp. 296-311). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Cabrera, N. L. (2019). White guys on campus: Racism, White immunity, and the myth of” post-racial” higher education. Rutgers University Press.
Cabrera, N. L., Watson, J. S., & Franklin, J. D. (2016). Racial arrested development: A critical whiteness analysis of the campus ecology. Journal of College Student Development, 57(2), 119-134. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.2016.0014
College Student Educators International (ACPA) & Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA). (2015). ACPA/NASPA professional competency areas for student affairs practitioners (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C: Authors. https://www.naspa.org/images/uploads/main/acpa_naspa_professional_competencies_final.pdf
Foste, Z., & Irwin, L. N. (2023). Race, whiteness, and student life in on-campus housing: A case study of three universities. American Educational Research Journal, 60(4), 735-768. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312231175643
Foste, Z. & Irwin, L. N. (2026). Disrupting white noise: Challenging beliefs about race on campus. Harvard Education Press.
Helms, J. E. (1998). Toward a model of white racial identity development. P. G. Altbach, K. Arnold, & I. C. King (Eds.), College Student Development and Academic Life (pp. 207-224). Routledge.
Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Harvard University Press.
Linder, C. (2015). Navigating guilt, shame, and fear of appearing racist: A conceptual model of antiracist white feminist identity development. Journal of College Student Development, 56(6), 535-550. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.2015.0057
Torres, V., Jones, S. R., & Renn, K. (2019). Student affairs as a low-consensus field and the evolution of student development theory as foundational knowledge. Journal of College Student Development, 60(6), 645-658. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.2019.0060