SPEAKER_00
Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. At the time of this recording, the Supreme Court has not yet issued a ruling on affirmative action in university admissions. Our guests today discuss possible implications around any changes, but they also explore more generally ways that a student's racial or ethnic identity influence every step in their college journey and whether that journey ends before it's ever even started.

Give these folks a listen and enjoy.

SPEAKER_01
Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Winnie Lado and I am the Associate Director of Enrollment Success on the College Greenlight Team at EAB. And I work directly with colleges who are consistently strategizing to bring in more of a diverse class.

And so how are they connecting with community-based organizations that are serving certain demographic of students, whether it's students who are coming from first generation backgrounds, students who are coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, or students who we perceive as underrepresented through the world of enrollment. And a significant portion of my work revolves around engaging these institutions and being more effective in terms of, one, recruiting these students, but also marketing to the community-based organizations, the advocates, the advisors, the counselors, high school teachers who might be also engaged in this work too. And so how do they find the right students to bring to their campus and who are a good fit? And so today I'm super excited to be joined by another advocate for college access, Dr.

Brian Peterson from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Peterson, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_02
Thank you for having me. I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_01
Yes. Would you mind telling our listeners a little bit about your work at Penn and maybe help us set the context for the discussion we want to have today around how a student's race and identity influence whether and where or how they consider going to college and the approach that they might take to making those decisions?

SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. Not great. So I am Dr.

Brian Peterson. I run University of Pennsylvania's Black Cultural Center, which is called Maku. It's one of six different cultural centers on campus.

We're located in a building in the middle of campus with two other cultural centers, La Casa Latina and Patch. In addition to running the center, I also lecture on campus. I teach a couple of different classes.

The most popular one right now is on financial literacy. I teach with an NFL football player named Brandon Copeland. We've been doing that one for five years now.

So that one is really, kids love that one. So we love doing it. And I also do pre-major advising, which means that incoming first year students who have actually just emailed me this week, they want to set up their appointment.

They found out who I am. So we're going to start meeting to talk about helping them navigate Penn. So I was saying that regard, you know, I've met some of these students last year when they were visiting and some of the students I may have met, you know, when they were in middle school because they come to visit us.

And so I think in a lot of ways, my role and what we're talking about is really helping people situate a place like Penn and understand, well, what is a Black Cultural Center? Why do you need that? What do you do? We have another organization on campus that works with first generation students. We have, you know, organizations that are working with international students. So I think in a lot of ways when we think about diversity, what we try to do is help students understand, families understand that Penn is a really, really big place.

We live in a very complicated time. We live in a city that's one of the largest poor cities. And so race plays a huge role in who people see on campus and how they engage them and how they engage each other.

And the students are, you know, at a very primitive time. So there's a lot happening always for them. And so what we try to do is just create a space to really have the conversations and really just figure out how to make people feel comfortable, whether they're on the application side or whether, you know, they're emailing me now as a class of 2027 member.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01
Thank you so much for sharing some of your background and the work that you do at Penn. It is really important for us to have a discussion, especially about race, ethnicity and identity in a world where we recognize that the Supreme Court is going to be making a decision on affirmative action. And that decision solely bases this conversation about race and ethnicity.

And so as you think about the students that you work with or have worked with at your time at Penn or in your career, how have you talked to students about their formative years and how that may have helped them shape their journey as they they considered their expectations for college and beyond. Is this an area in which you start the conversation about race or do you talk about identity? Do you talk about interests? Do you talk about just the sheer excitement of college before you tap into the identity piece and the racial piece as they consider these institutions?

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's another great question. I think in a lot of ways, you know, I have what I would regard as sort of a multi-pronged home court advantage, right? So I'm a Penn alum, but I'm also running a Black Cultural Center. So it really creates, you know, more of a softer landing spot to have this conversation.

But I'm also, you know, I'm going to be 52 this next birthday. So I think about when I came to Penn and what being Black meant means something completely different to today's students, right? You know, we had some semblance of diversity in our Black experience, but it was largely, even really the era before me, there was, you know, a huge swath of African-American sort of descended from the South, landed in Philadelphia, working class families. That was the pipeline to Penn, where now even just speaking specifically within the Black Penn community, it's from everywhere.

You know, you have, you know, students who are international, you have students who are first or second generation Caribbean, different African countries. I had a young man who came from London two years ago. He just finished two years ago.

I remember the first time he opened his mouth, we said, oh, you're not from here. And so, you know, for everyone, depending on where they're coming from, their idea of how they see race is going to be completely different. And again, they're at this formative stage where they're really seeing themselves as I'm this invincible human being out to conquer the world.

I got into Penn. I can do amazing things. So my race or my ethnic identity or my religion or my gender, like whatever it is that you are, you know, kind of weaving in, because I do think, you know, as we get into the conversation, we will talk a lot about intersectional identity because race and ethnicity is just one piece, right? It's a major piece for some students.

And for some students, arriving at Penn is the wake up call. You know, you have students who are coming from, you know, Ghana, for example, who they were in the majority for their entire lives. And when they get to Penn, it's like, wait, what do you mean? We have a black culture center, like, you know, like, what do we do here? Right.

And so I think, you know, part of it is listening and just leaning in. But then when you have something like we had in 2020 with the Black Lives Matters Movement and you have George Floyd and you have Breonna Taylor, no matter where people are from, they sort of get it, right? You know, for a lot of families, this has been something that they dealt with, you know, cycle after cycle, hashtag after hashtag before hashtags, there were headlines, right? And, you know, for some people, it's like, I did not know this is what America was going to be, right? And that spectrum of conversation, really for us to have a center where we can sit down and talk to people and just sort of meet them where they are. You know, that's what it's about.

But I also would say, you know, I don't look at myself as the sole provider of answers. I really do think that part of the community building process for us is helping to nurture our upperclassmen so that they can also lean in, particularly during COVID, because during that time, you know, another complicated layer to the past, you know, four years there, you know, we didn't have day to day interactions in our living room because no one was here, right? And so for us, it was the FaceTime conversations people were having with their peers, but for us to be able to pour into them and say, look, these are some things that we're seeing, right? And a lot of that is, is a heaviness around racial identity. So, you know, it really depends on where people are, where they're coming from.

SPEAKER_01
I agree. I think about the years that I've spent working in admissions at two selective institutions, and they were predominantly white institutions, and I attended one of them. And I oftentimes, Brian, remind myself that I didn't have the conversation about identity and ethnicity until I started applying for programs, whether it might be a flying program, a music program.

And in those essence, I was reminded through someone who wasn't the same race as me that I should be profiting off of my race and my identity in order to seem as a valuable candidate for admission into those programs. And so I started to realize that I can't talk about my interests. Instead, people are expecting or having this assumption that my identity and my race is going to be my golden ticket or the trauma that I may have experienced within my race or the demographic that I am part of is exactly what I need to get into any kind of program.

And it was it was mind blowing for a young individual to realize, you know, my peers who don't look like me are writing about anything and everything and don't have to talk about their identity. But somehow my identity is the only thing for some of these students, especially when we think about race and ethnicity. It becomes just the main focus and it is hard to unravel what identity means for you at such a young age.

And so I do worry for for students that there is this false perception that identity and race are exactly what you need to get into an institution or a program where in reality, there's so much more to an individual, as you mentioned, about intersections. So I really do appreciate you speaking to that. Any thoughts about, you know, some of the things that I shared in terms of when I perceived, have you seen students in in the past, you know, talk about, oh, whoa, this is a revelation that I'm having about my identity.

And I'm 22 years old. I'm not 18. I'm not 17.

This is later on. And so where is that expectation coming from? And how can we better acknowledge that this might not be the sole like response that we should have for these students and and how they are applying or connecting to programs?

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's fascinating because in a lot of ways, you know, particularly when we think about first generation college students, right, some of them for some of them, this is their story, right? You know, there is there is a there's a narrative of trauma. There's a narrative of struggle.

There's a narrative of having to do without for so long and then they but they don't want to have to always sell that story, right? They don't want to have that be all that they are. And then they could have, you know, someone that they meet and one of the pre-professional groups who's just come up through privilege, right? You know, same skin tone, right? Could could be relatives if you look at them and like, oh, you know, you guys must be related, but it's like their lives are completely separate. And how do we, you know, create space for that and will they give them an opportunity to connect with each other? But then with this larger backdrop of Black Lives Matters or affirmative action, all these other complicated things where you have their peers who, you know, have no racial or ethnic connection at all, who are looking at them and sort of putting them in the same box, right? But then politically, at times you're fighting for things where if you can understand that, you know, there are other people who really need to benefit from some of these things that maybe you may or may not need to benefit, but we're still having that same conversation.

I mean, we literally just celebrated Juneteenth two days ago, right? And we're thinking about what does that mean? Like, what did it even take for that to be recognized as a holiday? But also what is Juneteenth, right? And how do people really, really grapple with that whole idea? But sure, right? You know, I think that students have to really come into it on their own and really get comfortable, but also understand that, you know, there is no one narrative, right? There is no one sort of black identity. And that's for institutions to understand, as well as for the individual students themselves to say, look, you know, this is who I am and this is who I want to be. And I think for us, you know, with Maku and broader, you know, at Penn in particular, we really just try to create safe space for students to create to have that discovery.

And, you know, a lot of it is peer led, organizational led, as well as, you know, the different things that we do with the Maku.

SPEAKER_01
Thank you. Brian, as I think about the work that you do with Maku, tell our listeners, you know, why is it important and valuable for institutions to continue to have programs like Maku on their campus? Yes, we recognize that diversity, one aspect of it is race and ethnicity. But what is that value for students to continue to have a safe space or a space in which they are welcomed to feel safe about who they are and their history or, you know, their identities?

SPEAKER_02
Right, right. Part of it, pragmatically speaking, has nothing to do with race at all. Right. Part of it is this numerically. It's a large institution.

You know, there are 10,000 undergraduate students, right? And you get lost every day you get lost. So if you're on the soccer team, that's your community, right? If you're in the band, that's your community. If you're on the debate team, that's your community.

And this is just another place to offer community, right? So but then when we think again about the backdrop of all the different political things that are happening, as well as just affinity, just this different natural cultural connections. So Maku, we help to advise 30 plus different campus organizations on the undergrad side who are doing something connected to black culture. So some of those are ethnic based, pre-professional based, performance arts based, religious groups on down the line.

You know, and again, for them to have connections, we're like, oh, we like West African dance. I like West African dance too. We're going to form a group.

Oh, you're a black woman who wants to be an entrepreneur, right? So you can be a part of Black Wharton and they'll have a summit where we can do that. Or you're a pre-law student, but you understand historically, there's still stuff that's happening, right? There's still either particular obstacles we still have to break through. I think about black maternal wellness, which my wife works heavily on.

There's a lot there that she brings to the table that other black women are now becoming empowered to really become, you know, at the forefront of that conversation. So this space like Maku cultivates that, right, and builds that. And then we, you know, again, I said, I have sort of a dual home, on-court advantage being an alum.

I can tap into my wife's network of all these different black doctors who have gone through Penn undergrad and are now practitioners and connect them to the next generation of black pre-medical students, right? And that's that's a power base that I think, again, you know, where we're able to leverage that in a way that this helps students really see so many more possibilities. Like, again, I graduated from Penn in 1993. The students today have so much more access, you know, and it's not just because of the internet.

It's the internet combined with these human connections of these, you know, decades of other alums who have come through who really want to help them. And without a place like Maku, without, you know, black alumni support, without multicultural connections, this stuff is not going to happen on its own. Like you have to be intentional about making it work.

SPEAKER_01
Absolutely. I want to reiterate for our listeners that these programs are important because it builds community. This is not important just because it has to do about race or ethnicity or identity.

It's because of the community building and being able to build community through affinity is the most reassuring thing. And so being in a new place or being maybe five minutes away from home, but still knowing that you have access to a community that you know will celebrate you, will empower you, but then open doors to say, hey, I once thought that I should be a teacher, but hey, because I see other people like me going into the medical field, going into business, I can also feel empowered to see that as an opportunity for myself. That's the benefit of having these specific programs and offices on a campus, you know.

So thank you so much for sharing that. I want to shift a little bit back to our enrollment space and think about our institutions. And do you feel that it's fair to say that most colleges want to diversify their enrollment? And what do you expect will happen to Penn and other universities? Should the Supreme Court strike down affirmative action and admissions? I know we are in a chaotic place.

But what are your initial thoughts about the future of enrollment for institutions?

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and it's a very, very complicated time for a lot of reasons. So to answer your first question, I definitely agree that universities, campuses want to diversify. Right. And this is why it's so puzzling that we're talking about striking down affirmative action, right, because the way that the entire premise of affirmative action, as we currently understand it, it's based upon making the world a better place. It's based upon saying that we want our university to benefit from this broad swath of experiences and identities and wants and goals and histories, all these different things.

Affirmative action, diversity efforts are not about fixing history. It's not about repairing anything. It's not about restoring anything.

Right. It's not about setting aside spots for groups that have been disenfranchised. It's not about that legally.

It's just not right. We've already had court cases to argue that it's not. And the whole defense is, you know, this is this is what we're doing to say we want to be a part of this global economy, this global experience that is literally manifesting itself as we speak.

That's right. So we're not putting people in the room together to have conversations. We're not going to be, you know, globally informed.

Right. This is probably why we have foreign language requirements in high schools and in colleges so that we can speak to each other. Right. We have to live with each other. And this is why diversity is here.

So that's where we're supposed to be. But again, with ideas like critical race theory being kind of twisted and manipulated, affirmative action is experiencing the same thing. Right. And so now we've got to figure out what do we do? I don't know how you roll back or particularly for a place like Penn. What we've done is community we've created.

I don't I don't see that shifting. I feel that, you know, with the number of applicants, a selective institution like Penn has, you can still create a very diverse class to fulfill the goals of diversity, the institutional goals. And I think we're committed to doing that and we will continue to do that.

Other schools, it may be more challenging, right? And it may also depend on how much states can play a role in how they decide, particularly with their state systems, right? What what they're going to do and what they're not going to do. You know, so there's a lot happening. There's a lot happening, but I would say, you know, I'm really, you know, I'm looking forward to the ways that students engage this and really, you know, sort of take the front lines in this and this remained informed, but also really pushed.

But I hope that we're not too far behind the curve time wise and where we need to be because I know things are happening as students and they may not understand a part of that, too. I mean, it's interesting as I thought it's kind of taking shape now, but I feel like with Obama, there was this kind of lure to say, oh, we're post race, right? And I think with the access that our students now have, with the diversity that they have in some of the selective prep schools that they go to, it's almost like they've let their guard down and say, well, yeah, of course, this is going to be diverse because it's always been diverse. But no, it's only always been diverse for your young life.

Right. It's never it was not diverse when I was coming up and trying to apply for these spots. It was not right.

And so there's, you know, there's this law that I, you know, I hope that the things that are happening can kind of get us to commit and say, wait, why are we not reading these books in school? Why are why is even a conversation? Right. Because it really should not be. But to me, it's all connected.

Because it's really all connected.

SPEAKER_01
Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I also think about in the world of making decisions upon who might come to an institution.

There's heavy reliance on certain categories. And we think back to when the pandemic hit and many institutions suddenly became test optional. Many of those institutions relied so heavily on those scores to make a determination on the credibility of the student through an academic lens.

But then they were asked to not be able to consider that. And so other institutions or individuals within institutions found alternative measures to still be able to determine the credibility academically of a student without those numbers. And so they found a replacement, whether it is looking at AP scores individually, looking at subject scores or looking at IB scores.

But my question to you, Brian, is there a replacement for race? Should that be struck down?

SPEAKER_02
So that's where this is my personal view, but it really goes against what I just said around what what diversity and affirmative action are. Right. I think that we we have to figure out some ways to grapple with the historical inequities that have been created, right? And those those cut across racialized, they cut across economic lines. So I think you have to figure out some creative ways to to understand that.

Now, some people would argue that this is not the role of colleges, right? But then you have to point to where where do you start? Right. Whose whose responsibility is it? I would argue it's everyone's responsibility. We have to do it all across the board, right? We need more black women doctors.

That's a responsibility of medical schools, right? We need more black women CEOs. That's a responsibility of corporate hiring practices, right? We need more queer people like in all these spaces where they're underrepresented. Like we need more people, period, who are carrying the torches for the different communities that they represent, where they have been largely largely just excluded from these spaces.

Like, you know, and this is a part of just modern history, right? Like we we're now at a point where we can look and we can see that a point so we can educate people, which is probably why people don't want people to read particular books, because it's like it says what we did, right? This is what happened. It's not we're not making these things up, but we just want people to be aware or the less aware people are, the more you can say, well, of course, we don't want to change anything. Why do we change anything? Right.

Well, no, these things weren't right. And so, you know, legally, it's hard to do that. Right. And so that's when you really have to lean into what is the world that we want to have? How do we get there? Let's make some intelligent decisions that we can agree upon. But the agreement part is the part that's always the sticking point.

How do you do it? So I don't know if you do blind admissions. Do you? What happens? Like, I don't know. Yeah. I have I have no idea. I feel like, you know, I've looked at I've been a part of some search processes that were supposedly redacted.

But it's just like you can you can see it's like, well, I'm pretty sure this person exists. Right. And so, you know, does that impact your decision? Depends on who you are. And depends on, you know, what you're trying to get done.

You know, ideally in the best case scenario, you hire the best person. But let's think about Penn, 60,000 applications, 2,500 spots. Yeah. On Thursday, you could pull in 2,500 best people. And on Friday, you could pull in 2,500 different best people.

Yes. So at some point, you have to have all this other factors to say, well, here's what we're going to be about. And how do you do that? I don't have the magic wand, but I but I do feel like race and and reparative justice, in my personal opinion, have to always be a part of the conversation, right? Because we've done so much damage.

If we don't start undoing that damage, we're not going to be who we claim we are as a nation.

SPEAKER_01
I agree. And I'm hearing from you that there is no replacement to race. Right. There is physically no replacement to that as well. And so as we think about a potential ruling that eliminates stereotypes, assumptions, bias, you know, those are the things that are leading us into the complication of decision making.

Because the individual has the opportunity to evaluate the person who is presenting themselves. But if they present themselves with the joy of celebrating their identity, the person who might be evaluating, it is up to them to make that decision. But it's their bias or the stereotype that they perceive that will end up being the challenge.

And so those are the conversations. I hope more admissions and enrollment teams and campuses start to have. And as we think about this conversation, who is it going to affect? It's the students.

And so, Brian, as you think about what's happening in this world, I feel like we're tearing apart the essence of individuals, you know, because we can't change our race and our ethnicity. But are you talking to students on your campus about this issue? And what are you hearing? And if you're not talking, if it's not students on campus, but student perspectives, what have you been hearing from them about this idea that admissions could be blind to race and based strictly on merit? But what is merit? That's the other question. So any thoughts there about that?

SPEAKER_02
Right. And this one, you know, I think about I come from this question from the perspective of a parent of public school students, five, five young people in my household. Most. So I have one child who will be attending private school this year. That would be the first one ever, right? Everyone else, straight public school.

And I look at the public school system and I think about how Penn does not recruit largely from certain schools, right? And it's really because the schools are not set up to be feeders to Penn. Like you're really saying if we invite a student to apply, are they going to be able to have a great experience? Like you never want to invite someone to your campus and you know that they may not be able to do the work, right? And sadly, you can look at, you know, the grades across the board and the city and see that there are, you know, neighborhood schools are under perform, right? But underperforming is is contextual. Are they underperforming? They're underperforming in terms of where we would want to see performance.

But where are they in terms of the resources that they have allocated to them? Right? They may be performing above what they're what they should be doing because they don't have the resources. And so again, that when you think about how do you pull merit out of that? Right? I don't I don't understand like the conversation that you could even have to say, well, we can look at this school that has all these resources that's pumping kids to Penn and Harvard and Stanford or wherever else. Did they get in on merit or they get in because they had a counselor ratio that was actually like suitable, right? Did they have access to other resources that they have access to opportunities? Do they have access to AP courses? Do they have access to the things? Right? And so, you know, and this is to me, you know, working with young people, working with families that as I've done in other roles outside of my role at my coo, there's always, you know, there's always this.

Just context of these young people, I want to be a doctor, right? But I went to this this poorly performing school and I don't even really know that you don't get to be a doctor after just four years of college. Yes. And I've had a heartbreaking conversation like that where we could bring a student to campus for a program and say, yeah, I think I might want to go here and and they're in 12th grade and they're in Algebra too. Yeah. Right. And so it's just like, well, now we've got to have a broader conversation about college, but Penn is not going to be a part of that conversation. I get that you like the campus, but, you know, you're in the city, you can come for events, you can come for different things.

And maybe, you know, maybe you can transfer after a few good years here or maybe you can come for a grad program, but that reality check is heartbreaking. So again, like when I think about a word like Merit, I'm like, well, the system is so imbalanced that that's not even a word that I use. Right. I really think about systemic inequities and how we fix these broken systems. And that's that's a much bigger job.

SPEAKER_01
I couldn't agree more. In a few months ago, I gave a presentation to a bunch of enrollment leaders about the future of this work as we think about diversifying, you know, enrollment. And I remember making this comparison to say, you know, in high school, when I was in high school, everyone took the ACT, but because the ACT was then sharing names, depending on the scores that you were receiving, I got a 19 ACT score.

So I was getting letters from community colleges, local area schools, but all of my peers were getting letters from the yells of the world, the University of Madison, Wisconsin's of the world. And that definitely changed my perspective of which type of institution is going to see me as a viable candidate. And so when I thought about that, I realized that people who were guiding me through the application process were basically saying your test score is not going to get you into these institutions.

What's going to get you into these institutions? Do you want to talk about your refugee status? Do you want to talk about your mother passing away when you were young? Do you want to talk about being an immigrant? Do you want to talk about growing up low income? Those are the options that I received in order to be able to express myself in my narrative so that I can be a viable candidate. But that was so hard on my mental health because I didn't even know how to process those things. And I didn't even know, OK, hey, I'm first generation to the US and I'm first generation to college.

What are these things mean? Meaning, so as we think about mental health, because these questions or these perceptions that we have about race and identity and we ask these students to share that insight, what are some what are some ways that you know, you see race impacting the mental health of students as they think about college and think about their success as an individual on a college campus.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and it's been such such a difficult time covid and thinking about just, you know, the lives lost, right? And the impact on black communities in particular, you know, that was heavy. And then coming out of Black Lives Matter is that was heavy. But I think, you know, what I really love about today's students, compared to when I was at Penn, is an ownership of a mental wellness journey and a mental health journey.

Right. I hear students and my cool. We have sort of a common space called the Macul living room.

That's really the space we will congregate between classes have lunch. And you'll hear students, you know, say, all right, I got to wrap this conversation up because I got to go to meet with my therapist. Right. And that would not have happened to my generation at all. One, we weren't using therapy and for the one or two people who were, you wouldn't tell anyone.

You would take the back route to wherever the therapy office was and kind of try to sneak in the side door. But now, you know, students are really talking about it and they're helping each other. Because I would say above and beyond, you know, all the different challenges we talked about today with race and identity.

And, you know, I really appreciate you sharing your story about your application during and just how you had to navigate that amongst yourself. Because I think that it's it's an internal question and an internal struggle that we're all going to have constantly. Right. But we reached a moment now where I think we're we're embracing it. But Penn is hard.

Right. These these selective institutions are hard. And for for a young person who struggled in high school, who, you know, my daughter didn't have a high school graduation ceremony because of covid.

So there's there's memories that, you know, she may be triggered anytime someone pulls out a yearbook because hers got mailed to her. Right. So there's all these things that are going to happen. But then when you're battling, you know, in an academic competition with people who you imagine came from the best schools, right? And then if I or, you know, if you're at community college and you didn't think you would be in college, but there you are.

And your question, do you deserve this seat? Who do you talk to about that? Right. And so again, I really, really applaud this generation for saying, look, I've got questions, right? I need help. So part of that, you know, is is therapy for sure? Part of that really is, you know, a space like my cool, a tutoring center, peer mentoring, alumni networks, all the like, we have to build these villages to really support the young people and not just put every single thing on therapy.

But but again, I really do. I do applaud them for leaning in and saying, you know, this stuff is tough. But I want to I want to get through and I want to, you know, really enjoy the journey as much as I can.

SPEAKER_01
Mm hmm. And there are a lot of misconceptions from institutions making this assumption that mental health is a professional. It has to be formalized.

While that is true, mental health is also social wellness. So for individuals and our students who are coming from backgrounds that aren't the majority on their institution, campus or, you know, location, we have to realize there's an environmental shift. There is a social shift and everyone might be navigating that as well.

And so we can exclude our students from having those opportunities to build, like you said, Brian, community through affinity. And it's not just saying, hey, let's have a conversation about trauma. It's let's have a conversation about, OK, this is affecting me today.

Are you also going through it too? Is there a advisor that I could talk to that can help me navigate this? That gives individuals the step towards actually seeking out a professional should they need that opportunity. So give them the space to, you know, speak up and be able to share their voices and their narratives. And I couldn't agree more.

The students are doing that so much through their essay writing. You know, I've seen so many essays talking about how there has been a dynamic shift in how they perceive themselves, but they don't know what to do with it. And so if we can be more attentive to those students, then we can think about the resources that we can provide on a college campus to further improve retention one and the ultimate success of the student.

So thank you for sharing that. Dr. Peterson, you have been very generous with your time today. But before we go, I would love to ask you to share maybe your top three to four pieces of advice for university leaders or enrollment leaders on how to better support students of color, students who are coming from marginalized communities on their campus today and those who may be beginning their college search.

What advice do you have for them?

SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. Now, again, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to share. So I would say one of the things that I've seen work really well at Penn and I do it myself as a leader of a center here is just listen.

You know, I spend a lot of time not, you know, I want to research. I want to understand best practices. I want to understand what's happening in the landscape and higher ed, but also want to understand what students are bringing to the table.

What ideas they have. What are their experiences? Because I think as you listen to particularly, you know, within diverse communities, understanding what that means to them and how they see their place in the institution, we can then learn, oh, maybe we're maybe we're giving you all too much, you know, in terms of the expectation to show up for this photo shoot to lead this working group, right? To do all these things to fix all of these huge problems that, you know, are people's jobs, but we're putting that on students, right? But at the same time, sometimes when they take that work on, they gain a perspective that we frankly don't have. And if we don't create a platform for them to share that with us, we lose that year of labor, right? We lose all those experiences.

And even if it's just casual conversations with students that you encounter, just, you know, asking questions and just really seeing what is it like for you to be here in 2023? Because I can't rely on what it was like for me to have been here in 1990. Right. It is not the same place at all. So that would be number one.

Listen, number two, I would say is just empower spaces like Ma'aqoo, community building spaces, and they could look any number of different ways, right? But I think that when you even, even on small campuses, right? When you empower spaces like Ma'aqoo clubs, different, different opportunities, people just dive deep. It could be study abroad opportunities where people are going in small groups. But when you can build up those communities, it really exemplifies what I perceive as like the role of higher education, which is to bring people together around rich ideas and allow them to just be.

Yeah. Right. So if I'm just being, but as a black man, as a as a father of five, as, you know, someone who claims Philadelphia is home now, but originally from Harrisburg, and I can bring that experience to, you know, as a as a faculty mentor on a trip with, you know, a 20 year old from another part of the globe, right? That's why we're here, right? That's why we're here. So I would say just create those learning communities.

And the last thing I would say, you know, and this this is another thing that I've had to learn, particularly coming out of COVID. I say coming out of COVID always sort of hesitantly because COVID is still here, right? So it's a weird time because we're acting like everything is fine, but it's not exactly fine. But I would say, you know, for the last two years, we've gradually ramped back up.

And in some ways we've tried to make up for lost time. And you can't make up for lost time. The time is lost.

But we've over programmed, right? And then students, you know, they'll launch a new group without realizing that a similar group exists, right? And campuses where we're saying, we're here, the requirements here, the things. But, you know, no one, this is what I teach, a financial literacy class. You don't really learn this stuff in high school, right? And when you get to campus, no one tells you how to be a student.

No one tells you how to balance your time. And so we're throwing all this stuff at 17, 18 year olds. And they've never had to hold all this stuff before because they've always been at home and that's been a more managed process.

Now they're independent. But again, I'm not putting an honest on them to say, hey, you guys need to figure this out quicker. I'm saying as an institution, we need to say what matters most to us.

What experiences do we need to cultivate? And how do we reduce the level of stress we're putting on our young people? Because we can see the negative results when they don't have a way to process it healthily. It's it's it's not good. It's not good.

You know, and they suffer in silence and, you know, we've we've seen extremes, you know, suicide and loss. And we've seen students who are literally just not having the experience that they thought they were going to have and they have no idea what to do about it. So they go through these four years and they're miserable.

They're miserable. So we do not want that. But again, I think we have to arm that as institutions to say what's most important to us? How do we create healthy communities, healthy individuals so that they can feel good about what they've decided to do, right? And and continue to lift up the torch of the institution long after they graduated or graduated as a whole, holistically developed person.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Dr. Peterson, it's been quite an honor, you know, hearing your perspective. And I deeply appreciate you for joining me today.

This conversation is just the beginning, and I hope our listeners take this conversation and continue, share it with your leaders and have them really listen into the the small things that we talked about that are such big factors into an individual's perspective and opportunities on your campus. And so if we can be better humans by being humans to one another, then I think we can have a better understanding of individuals and how they navigate through this process on a personal level, but also on a structural level. Because, yes, you don't want them on your campus for seven years.

You want them to be able to use the four years or the six years that they have on your campus as a way for them to grow and nourish themselves through this lens rather than being, you know, a miserable experience because they're also navigating their mental health, the environment and the societal challenges that exist. So again, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your expertise and thank you for the work that you do to continue empowering students and their narratives as they as they seek opportunities at Penn.

SPEAKER_02
Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00
Thank you for listening. Please join us next week on Office Hours with the A.B.