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Importance of a Critical Mass

This chapter turns to the role of racial-ethnic identity-based campus organizations in helping or hindering students to manage feelings of being othered. Upon arrival on campus, racial-ethnic minority students find themselves dramatically outnumbered by White students, taught by largely White professors, and learning about White historical figures and artifacts. Because of the segregated nature of American K–12 schooling, this shift into suddenly being racially-ethnically outnumbered can be a significant challenge to campus integration. Mounting feelings of social isolation add an additional layer of stress atop an already difficult transition. Away from home for the first time, many minority students feel culturally lost as they begin their new life as college students. Students' perspectives on being othered ranged from feeling that their peers appreciated their differences to feeling stereotyped as the sole representative of their group. The extent to which they had counterspaces helped them process those feelings and celebrate their differences as diversity.