Degree Name

BS

Department

Sociology

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Defense Date

2024-02-05

Publication Date

2024-02-16

First Faculty Advisor

Gregory A. Thompson

First Faculty Reader

Benjamin Gibbs

Honors Coordinator

Michael Cope

Keywords

Belonging, Mixed-Methods, Higher Education, Student Experience, Diversity, Inclusion

Abstract

This mixed-methods study employed the Experience Sampling Method (ESM; Csíkszentmihályi; Larson, 1984; Zirkel et al., 2015) to document the feelings and experiences of belonging for 22 low-income, BIPOC, first generation college students and a comparison group of 15 White, middle-upper class students at Brigham Young University (BYU), a predominantly White, middle class, religious university. Due to, among other things, these demographic realities, BYU grapples with structures and cultures that marginalize minority students on campus. Data analysis from ESM surveys, interviews, and focus groups reveal that regardless of background (i.e, including White middle-class students), participants experienced a sense of exclusion at BYU. However, BIPOC, low income, and first-gen participants experienced exclusion with more frequency and in a wider array of settings than the comparison group. Of the three marginalized subgroups that I studied, BIPOC students reported experiencing the highest level of social exclusion on campus. Low-income and first-gen students that are White described themselves to be an “invisible minority,” which allowed for a higher sense of social inclusion but a lower sense of acknowledgement. Data also revealed a phenomena I term “White anxiety,” in which White comparison participants felt uncertainty and anxiety about how to appropriately manage their White privilege and majority status on BYU campus. This data varies from previous racial theories on Whiteness such as White fragility.

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