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The failure of institutional leaders to respond to and disrupt racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and the intersections of multiple forms of oppression on campus often compels students with minoritized identities to engage in activism and resistance. These students may not identify with the term activist (Linder & Rodriguez, 2012) and rarely receive formal support from administrators for their activism (Linder, 2019). Some university administrators view student activists or students who attempt to interrupt traditional power structures as “troublemakers” rather than engaged students (Spade, 2017, para. 13). As a result, some college and university educators miss opportunities to improve campus environments and thereby further harm already marginalized students.
The purpose of this article is to problematize traditional notions of activism by centering the experiences of queer and trans students and Students of Color engaged in resistance and activism. Minoritized students’ engagement with resistance and activism often stems from necessity rather than choice. The failure of institutional leaders to address the needs of minoritized students results in students engaging in resistance and activism to interrupt hostile campus environments.
THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS
We frame the experiences of the students in this study as a counternarrative to the dominant narrative on student activism. Most of the literature on student activism has centered cisgender, White, middle-class students at elite institutions, most of whom are women (see Biddix, 2010; Dominguez, 2009; Linder, Myers, Riggle, & Lacy, 2016; Taha, Hastings, & Minei, 2015; Winston, 2013). Additionally, researchers seldom explicitly name specific populations as their focus, nor do they examine findings through an identity-conscious or power-conscious lens.
The dominant narrative about student activism in higher education highlights activism as a positive form of civic and campus engagement (Barnhardt, Sheets, & Pasquesi, 2015; Biddix, 2014; Hamrick, 1998; Kezar, 2010; Kezar & Maxey, 2014; Kriggs, Austic, Gutierrez, & Dirksen, 2015) and focuses on traditional forms of activism, including contacting public officials, participating in marches and sit-ins, distributing and signing petitions, and boycotting particular businesses (Barnhardt, 2014; Kriggs et al., 2015; Metzger, Erete, Barton, Desler, & Lewis, 2015). Many students with minoritized identities engage in online environments (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015; Conley, 2014), and some consider their existence in dominant spaces (e.g., college and university campuses) a form of activism (Stewart, in press).
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