The Pact: How a Seemingly Race-Neutral Behavioral Policy Reproduced Racial Inequality at a Predominantly White Liberal Arts College

Abstract

How do seemingly nonracial organizational processes reproduce racial inequality? This study examines how “the Pact,” an ostensibly race-neutral COVID-19 behavioral policy implemented at a predominantly White U.S. liberal arts college, undermined social connection and belonging among students of color. Analyzing three waves of interviews with 30 undergraduates (N = 75 interviews), we document disparities in four domains of campus life: (1) social isolation in residence halls, (2) access to “safe” forms of rule breaking, (3) visibility and surveillance, and (4) stakes of violation. We identify three underlying mechanisms—unequal resource allocation, uneven rule enforcement, and color-blind decision-making—and demonstrate how distinct institutional conditions facilitated these processes. This analysis advances theoretical understandings of racialized organizational processes in higher education by connecting previously theorized mechanisms to specific university characteristics and practices.

Keywords

higher education color-blind racism racialized organizations COVID-19 longitudinal interviews

How do apparently nonracial organizational processes reproduce racial inequality? Scholars have long studied how educational institutions perpetuate social inequalities and serve elite interests (Armstrong et al. 2014; Armstrong and Hamilton 2013; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Karabel 2006; Stevens, Armstrong, and Arum 2008; Stuber 2011). More recently, researchers have begun to examine how ostensibly nonracial organizational structures maintain racial hierarchies (Ray 2019), with a few recent studies exploring this phenomenon in higher education (Baker and McCloud 2023; Nelson, Graham, and Rudin 2021; Nguemeni Tiako, Ray, and South 2022; Ray 2013). The diverse landscape of U.S. higher education, with its varied funding models, institutional sizes, selectivity levels, and demographic profiles, prompts questions about how specific organizational characteristics may perpetuate or challenge racial disparities.

Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of racialized organizational processes in U.S. higher education by analyzing the case of a selective liberal arts college (SLAC) that implemented a highly restrictive behavioral policy known as “the Pact” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during the 2020–2021 academic year. The Pact was designed to reduce COVID-19 outbreaks by limiting students’ close contacts. Although it succeeded in that goal, it inadvertently imposed disproportionate social costs on SLAC’s small population of students of color.

How did this seemingly race-neutral behavioral policy produce racially disparate social consequences? Drawing on three waves of yearly in-depth interviews with 30 undergraduates (N = 75 interviews), we identify disparities in four domains of campus life: (1) social isolation in residence halls, (2) access to “safe” forms of rule breaking, (3) visibility and surveillance, and (4) stakes of violation. We argue that three underlying organizational processes drove these disparities: unequal resource allocation, uneven rule enforcement, and color-blind decision-making. Furthermore, we identify specific organizational characteristics of SLAC—its majority White demographics, privileged treatment of varsity athletes, and tight coupling of racial and class inequality—that contributed to the observed patterns and may drive similar processes in other campus contexts.

Our study advances current knowledge by connecting previously theorized mechanisms to specific university characteristics and practices. Moreover, it underscores the importance of considering the impacts of racism when crafting any university policy, even those apparently unrelated to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Background

Race on Campus: Experiences of Students of Color at Predominantly White Institutions

Despite universities’ explicit goals to advance racial equity, inequalities persist in student experiences. A substantial body of research documents racial marginalization among students of color attending predominantly White institutions (PWIs), including experiences of social isolation, racial jokes and slurs, hypervisibility, and tokenism (Harwood et al. 2012; Pan and Reyes 2021; Ray 2013; Torres and Charles 2004). Studies show that Black and Latinx undergraduates encounter stereotypes of intellectual inferiority and criminality (Diaz and Lee 2020; Torres and Charles 2004), with Black males, in particular, experiencing heightened surveillance both on and off campus (Bonilla-Silva and Peoples 2022; Jenkins, Tichavakunda, and Coles 2021; Mills 2020; Smith, Allen, and Danley 2007; Watanabe 2021). Asian students confront the dual stereotypes of “perpetual foreigner” and “model minority” (Ruiz, Im, and Tian 2023), and Native students face challenges to their legitimacy on campus rooted in assumptions about affirmative action (Jack 2024).

Intersections of Race and Class

Class-based tensions can exacerbate the marginalization experienced by students of color at PWIs. Reflecting the history and persistence of structural racism in the United States (Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Owens 2020; Torres 2024), racial divides among college students overall strongly correlate with socioeconomic divides (Taylor and Turk 2019). The link between Whiteness and wealth creates conditions for the double marginalization of lower-class students of color attending PWIs (Torres 2009), particularly those from segregated lower-income neighborhoods and underresourced schools (Jack and Black 2022). Torres (2009:888) argues that “social class differences push black [sic] students further to the margins of campus life, particularly at schools that have traditionally catered to affluent students. It is thus the interaction of race and class that is so powerful in promoting a sense of cultural alienation.”

Other studies examining racial differences among lower-income and first-generation college students further demonstrate the importance of considering the intersections of race and social class. For example, Benson and Lee (2020) document heterogeneity in the experiences of lower-class origin students at a selective liberal arts college, demonstrating how racial dynamics shape students’ experiences of connection or disconnection. They observe that students of color uniquely bear the burden of being viewed as racial spokespersons, and Black women, in particular, experience exclusion in campus dating markets. Lower-class White students are more likely to “pass” as middle-class than their Black and Brown peers despite inward feelings of discomfort and alienation in doing so (Benson and Lee 2020:167). Pan and Reyes (2021) find that Latino students at an elite, predominantly White law school experience “feelings of otherness” that transcend socioeconomic background, identifying heightened visibility due to skin color and cultural differences, particularly among recent immigrant families, as the underlying mechanisms (Pan and Reyes 2021:216).

In contrast to some elite research universities where a significant number of Black and Brown students come from middle- to upper-class backgrounds (e.g., Charles et al. 2022; Ferguson and Lareau 2021; Kim 2024; Thornton 2023), SLAC’s student body includes very few such students. This demographic composition reflects not only broader societal inequalities but also SLAC’s evolving approach to recruitment and financial aid. Historically, SLAC catered to a predominantly wealthy and White student population. In recent years, however, the college has expanded its outreach through the Higher Education Opportunity Project (HEOP), actively recruiting lower-income students of color, primarily Black and Latinx, from New York City and offering them (nearly) full financial aid packages. Meanwhile, other students face a high sticker price with limited financial aid. Although robust financial aid packages undeniably give lower-income students opportunities they might not otherwise have, this arrangement combined with the legacy of White wealth at this institution inadvertently lead to a student body where students of color are overwhelmingly clustered at the bottom of the socioeconomic distribution (Ray 2019).

Campus Counterspaces

One way SLAC has historically sought to support its students of color is through initiatives facilitating peer connection and institutional supports. Research demonstrates the importance of same-race friendship networks for racially minoritized students at PWIs as a source of understanding and belonging in the context of experiences of isolation, prejudice, and discrimination (Debrosse, Thai, and Brieva 2023; Deckman 2022; Gilkes Borr 2019; Keels 2020; Pan and Reyes 2021). Yet same-race friends can be difficult to find when a majority of the student body is White. At many PWIs, for example, Black and Brown students may only be able to find one or two peers who share their racial identity in a predominantly White residence hall and thus must exert strategic effort to find same-race peers (Gilkes Borr 2019). At SLAC, as elsewhere, campus cultural centers and student organizations serve as vital “counterspaces” that can promote a sense of belonging, provide a safe space away from microaggressions experienced in other campus contexts, facilitate information sharing, and offer a platform for identity expression and development (Case and Hunter 2012; Deckman 2022; Guiffrida 2003; Harper and Quaye 2007; Keels 2020; Lee and Harris 2020). Before the pandemic, SLAC facilitated a robust cohort program with in-person meetings to support lower-income students of color along with multiple student-led organizations. However, the Pact severely restricted the activity of these groups, raising concerns about the well-being of students of color when they not only lost these opportunities for connection and support but also had their social networks limited to their (mostly White) hallmates.

COVID-19 and U.S. Higher Education

A growing interdisciplinary literature investigates COVID-19’s impact on U.S. college students (Gillis et al. 2023; Gillis and Krull 2020; Jack 2024; Sanchez, Lamont, and Zilberstein 2022; van Stee 2023a, 2023b; van Stee, Kuperberg, and Mazelis 2024). Studies document numerous challenges undergraduates faced following the March 2020 campus closures, including housing and food insecurity (Goldrick-Rab 2021), mental health challenges (Conrad et al. 2021), and family caregiving responsibilities (Gillis et al. 2023; van Stee 2023a, 2023b). Disparities manifested across preexisting fault lines of inequality including race/ethnicity and social class (Gillis and Krull 2020; Gillis et al. 2023; Jack 2024; van Stee 2023a, 2023b).

This growing body of research demonstrates the valuable insights scholars can gain by studying this “unsettled time” in U.S. higher education (Swidler 1986). Although such studies ostensibly focus on pandemic-related disruptions, they illuminate enduring social processes. For example, recent studies examining the transition to remote instruction reveal the unequal protections and payoffs afforded by different types of campus employment (Jack and Bassett 2024) and expose class-based divides in students’ expectations for material reliance on their parents (van Stee 2023a, 2023b). Such findings transcend the unique historical moment of COVID-19 campus closures and provide broader insight into mechanisms of inequality in higher education.

Students’ experiences after returning to campus have received comparatively less attention. A survey by Davidson College’s College Crisis Initiative indicates approximately half of colleges offered some in-person instruction in the fall of 2020 (The Chronicle of Higher Education 2020). Yet research on reopening has focused on the predictors and public health consequences of university reopening timelines while paying less attention to students’ experiences (Anderson 2023; Collier et al. 2022; Felson and Adamczyk 2021).

By examining the experiences of students who returned to SLAC in fall 2020, our study not only addresses this empirical gap in the COVID-19 higher education literature but more importantly, uses this historical moment to uncover hidden organizational processes. In doing so, we contribute to an emerging body of work leveraging pandemic-era disruptions to identify enduring mechanisms of educational inequality (Jack 2024; Jack and Bassett 2024; van Stee 2023b; van Stee et al. 2024).

Racialized Organization Theory

Racialized organization theory posits that organizations are inherently racial structures that either reproduce or challenge existing racial hierarchies (Ray 2019, 2022). In the original articulation of the theory, Ray (2019:27) argued that “race is constitutive of organizational foundations, hierarchies, and processes,” outlining three primary processes through which routine organizational procedures “enhance or diminish the agency of racial groups.” These processes include the unequal distribution of resources, the credentialing of Whiteness, and the decoupling of formal rules from organizational practice along racial lines.

The unequal distribution of resources occurs both among and within organizations. The material disparities between America’s highly segregated workplaces, schools, and churches illustrate the racial stratification that exists among organizations (Huffman and Cohen 2004; Reardon and Owens 2014; Wilde, Huttenlocher, and van Stee 2024), whereas the concentration of non-White individuals at the bottom of organizational pay scales and power structures—think of disproportionately Black and Brown janitorial workers cleaning the offices of disproportionately White CEOs—illustrates racial stratification within organizations (Zhavoronkova et al. 2022).

The treatment of Whiteness as a credential refers to its association with assumed merit such that it grants access to organizational incorporation, resources, and opportunities. In contrast, audit studies demonstrate that Blackness functions as a “negative credential,” disadvantaging Black applicants across various organizational settings even when formally recognized credentials are held constant (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003; Pager 2003). Prevalent racial schemas in the contemporary United States include the association of Whiteness with purity and innocence, juxtaposed against the association of Blackness with criminality and Hispanic/Latino identity with illegality (Eastman 2015; Menjívar 2021; Muhammad 2010). Organizational processes such as hiring and promotion in workplaces—or admissions and academic opportunities in higher education—connect these abstract schemas to material and social resources (Nguemeni Tiako et al. 2022; Ray 2019; Ray and Purifoy 2019).

The decoupling of formal rules from organizational practice along racial lines occurs when despite formal commitments to equity, access, and inclusion, organizations maintain “policies and practices that reinforce, or at least do not challenge, existing racial hierarchies” (Ray 2019:42). Ostensibly race-neutral rules often are racially disparate in practice. As Ray (2019:42) notes, one reason for this is that “racialized organizations are likely to apply rules differently based on the race of the rule-breaker.”

Ray and Purifoy (2019:132) consider how Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) concept of color-blind racism manifests in organizational processes, reproducing racial inequality through “concrete, apparently nonracial mechanisms.” They argue that Bonilla-Silva’s color-blind frames are embedded in mundane organizational processes that support equality rhetorically while resisting substantive change (abstract liberalism), treat White cultural norms as universal standards (cultural racism), dismiss claims of racism (minimization), and legitimize racial inequality as a natural result of nonracial factors (naturalization). A crucial insight embedded throughout this discussion of organizational color-blindness is the recognition that treating Whiteness as the default standard in organizational decision-making—whether by devaluating non-White experiences and cultural styles or by ignoring the existence of racism—is inherently racist. In short, when Whiteness is taken for granted, it is privileged.

Universities as Racialized Organizations

Scholars have begun to apply these insights to the field of U.S. higher education, identifying specific organizational characteristics, policies, and practices that perpetuate racial inequality. Ray (2019:39) himself highlights the endowment gap between historically Black colleges and universities and PWIs, which has doubled in the past two decades. Turning to racial stratification within universities, Ray (2013) documents material and social inequalities between Black and White fraternities at a midwestern PWI (Ray 2013; Ray and Rosow 2010, 2012). Materially, Ray and Rosow (2010:526) argue, “There is a historical legacy of racial discrimination, both within and external to the university, that has traditionally precluded black [sic] fraternities and sororities from gaining equal access to economic resources such as Greek houses and large alumni endowments.” These material inequalities, in turn, drive social inequalities: The absence of private on-campus houses for Black fraternities coupled with Black students’ status as a numeric minority on campus subject Black fraternity men to heightened visibility and scrutiny compared to their White counterparts (Ray 2013; Ray and Rosow 2010).

Nelson et al. (2021) further demonstrate how Whiteness is privileged through organizational structures. They describe the “unmarked Whiteness” of Bowdoin College, explaining how its admissions practices ensure that White, wealthy students comprise the majority, facilitating a culture that expects and privileges Whiteness. The fact that the student body is overwhelmingly White and wealthy, they argue, “creates an indelible blueprint for the norms of social interaction and the expectations outside actors (e.g., parents, donors) maintain for the kinds of socialization that will occur on campus” (Nelson et al. 2021). Nelson et al. contend that this dynamic is intensified by the “extracurricular hierarchy” in which predominantly White Division III athletic teams enjoy higher social status. Other studies indicate that the privileged composition and treatment of athletic teams is not unique to Bowdoin. For instance, Jack (2019) describes athletes at an elite university receiving spring break meals while others—notably, the lower-income students who remained on campus—did not. Moreover, despite the high visibility of Black players on revenue-generating football and basketball teams, other college sports teams are disproportionately White and affluent, especially at selective universities (Hextrum 2020, 2023; Selingo 2020; Tompsett, Mcdossi, and Roscigno 2023).

Although demography can contribute to the Whiteness of institutional climate, simply increasing the number of students of color does not in itself dismantle White supremacy. As Bonilla-Silva and Peoples (2022) point out, a growing share of America’s top universities are considered diverse numerically, yet “the way that racial power and history has shaped these institutions matters more” than the present demographic composition of their student body in terms of influencing institutional climate (Bonilla-Silva and Peoples 2022:1493). When syllabi privilege White scholars and White perspectives; when campus police disproportionately surveille, stop, and effect physical violence on students of color; and when names, statues, and traditions privilege Whiteness, ignore racist histories, or evoke racist stereotypes, White supremacy is maintained through the university’s core structures even if the student body becomes more racially diverse (Bonilla-Silva and Peoples 2022).

The literature reviewed here theorizes broad mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequality and has begun to examine their manifestations in various higher education contexts. Building on this foundational work, we advance current knowledge by analyzing how specific institutional conditions, broader societal inequalities, and racist cultural schemas interacted to shape the Pact’s racially disparate consequences. Our analysis thus contributes to a deeper understanding of racialized organizational processes, offering insights relevant to institutions of higher education beyond our specific case.

Data and Methods

This article emerged from a broader study analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ college transitions and experiences through a longitudinal yearly interview design. We use a subset of that data: the first three waves of semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted in fall 2020, fall 2021, and fall 2022/spring 2023. In the following sections, we describe our research site and sample before detailing the content of the Pact and outlining our analytic approach.

Research Site

SLAC is a selective liberal arts college located in a rural region of the northeastern United States. Like many other selective and well-resourced universities in the United States, SLAC has recently demonstrated a commitment to increasing the representation of students of color and those from lower-income families. It is part of a movement toward offering grants to recruit academically talented students from very low-income families that began in the late 1990s with Princeton University (Jack 2019). SLAC has more than doubled its percentage of students of color since 1997, when this figure was approximately 6 percent.

Nonetheless, in fall 2020, SLAC’s students attended a very White campus, and campus demographics played a role in the Pact’s consequences. In fall 2020, the entering class at SLAC comprised 572 students. Of the 564 students who provided self-identified race/ethnicity information, White students constituted the largest group at 82 percent. The remaining students identified as Latinx (8 percent), Asian (4 percent), Black (3 percent), multiracial (3 percent), and Native American/Native Hawaiian (less than 1 percent). Just under 20 percent of all SLAC students receive Pell Grants, and many U.S. students of color receive extensive scholarships through HEOP.

Sample

The sample was designed to include a cross-section of students who began college at SLAC in fall 2020, with a deliberate focus on including a higher proportion of students of color to aid in the analysis of racial inequalities. All students in our sample began college as first-year students in fall 2020, and all lived on campus. The sample was gathered through two methods. First, a preliminary survey description and link were sent to all first-year program (FYP) course professors in a newsletter along with a request that they share the information with their students. Due to institutitional review board restrictions, we were prohibited from contacting students directly or sending survey distribution reminders to faculty. These limitations coupled with the challenges faculty faced during the pandemic likely resulted in fewer survey invitations reaching students than intended. Based on the number of different FYP cohorts reported by survey respondents and our knowledge of FYP class sizes, we estimate that fewer than 200 students received a survey invitation. Twenty-six students completed the initial survey. Twenty-four of these initial survey respondents indicated a racial/ethnic identity; of these, 20 were White, 2 were Black, 1 was Asian, and 1 was Latinx. Of the 26 survey respondents, 15 completed an interview. Among this group of 15 interviewees, 11 were White, 2 were Black, 1 was Asian, and 1 was Latinx.

We supplemented this approach with snowball sampling to increase sample size and diversity. We asked interviewees to provide names of other first-year students who might be willing to participate, explicitly communicating our aim to increase the representation of students of color, those from lower-income backgrounds, and those who do not identify as women.

Reflecting our targeted sampling strategy, the final sample overrepresents students identifying as Black, Latinx, or another racial identity relative to the incoming class, and White students are underrepresented (see Table 1). The “other racial identity” category includes one working-class Asian woman and three multiracial students: a lower-middle-class Native/Asian woman, a lower-middle-class Black/White man, and an upper-middle-class Middle Eastern/White woman. Our analysis focuses on comparing the experiences of Black, Latinx, Asian, and multiracial students with those of peers identifying only as White because this is the line of comparison where the most striking differences emerged. The sample size limits the conclusions we can draw regarding more nuanced variations among racially minoritized students.

Table 1.

Social Class Background by Race/Ethnicity of Wave 1 Interview Sample.

	Upper-Middle Class/Upper Class	Lower-Middle Class/Middle Class	Working Class	Total
White	11	9	—	20
Black	—	1	2	3
Latinx	—	1	2	3
Other racial identity	1	2	1	4
Total	12	13	5	30

Years 2 and 3 interviews had a reinterview rate of 80 percent and 70 percent, respectively, resulting in a total of 75 interviews. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.

The fall 2020 semi-structured interviews asked about students’ precollege experiences, college decision-making process, academic adjustment to college, social adjustment to college, mental health, thoughts on the Pact, and perceptions of the Pact’s impacts on their lives. The Year 2 interviews covered similar topics, asking about students’ experiences in the spring 2021 semester (when the Pact was still in place) and the fall 2021 semester (when the Pact was no longer in place). The Year 3 interviews covered the same topics for the subsequent year and students’ retrospective accounts of their experiences with the Pact. We also analyzed the 10-page document all students had to sign prior to beginning in fall 2020, which outlined the rules of the Pact.

The Pact

The Pact was SLAC’s response to a state mandate that universities offering in-person courses during the 2020–2021 academic year create a safety plan to reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 spreading on campus. A 10-page document outlined numerous policies ranging from public health measures (e.g., washing hands and wearing masks) to limitations of movement (e.g., not leaving the campus’s very rural county) to a set of extensive social restrictions. SLAC usually requires students to live on campus all four years. During the 2020–2021 academic year, students were allowed to choose to enroll remotely, although most students chose to enroll in person, especially first-year students.

The university assigned each student to an “extended family unit” reminiscent of the popular “COVID pod” concept, designed to be their socializing unit. Students could only socialize in person without masks among members of their respective units. To socialize in person with students of another unit, they either needed to be masked in a group of fewer than 10 inside or six feet apart in a group of fewer than 50 outside. These rules applied to student organizations’ events, including the HEOP cohort program designed to support lower-income students of color, which had to file a “safety plan” with the university prior to holding gatherings. In practice, this barred student organizations like HEOP from gathering for meals. Varsity sports, however, were governed by more permissive rules, as we describe in the following.

The extended family units were determined based on a student’s residence hall assignment. Returning students could choose to live with friends in the same extended family unit. However, first-year students were assigned to residence halls based on their FYP course enrollment, and roommate decisions considered factors such as stated sleeping preferences and personality characteristics listed on a self-reported form. Students were assigned to 1 of 32 FYP courses based loosely on their expressed academic interests. In non-COVID years, the FYP is intended to serve as an academic and social support system for students before they branch out to find their own social places around campus. Students did not know when ranking their FYP options that their assignment would determine their close contacts for the year.

Students were required to sign a statement acknowledging that the consequences of violating the Pact could include “warnings, loss of specific campus privileges, housing reassignment, loss of the privilege to live in University housing, or loss of permission to be on campus” and that students “sent home for disciplinary reasons or otherwise for violation of this Pact” would receive “no refunds” of payments to SLAC. Professors were not required to accommodate such students remotely for in-person courses, so a student found to be in violation of the Pact could be forced to drop their courses without a refund.

Analysis

Our analysis followed a multistage, iterative process. After the first wave of interviews, the first author and three research assistants conducted an informal open coding process, identifying themes related to students’ social lives and their experiences with the Pact. Key themes that emerged inductively included social isolation, FYP composition, informal student gatherings, party participation, and discipline warnings. The first author and research assistants then used these preliminary themes to construct the interview guide for Wave 2.

Following the Wave 2 interviews, the first author worked with another set of research assistants to write thematic memos, focusing on changes observed between the interview waves and lingering questions. Wave 2 themes included breaking the Pact, unease, friendship changes, and Pact enforcement. This analysis inspired additional questions about discipline warnings/strikes and social support that we included in the Wave 3 interview guide.

Themes from Wave 3 included students’ current friend networks, retrospective opinions on the Pact, and sense of belonging. This longitudinal design, where each subsequent interview guide was developed based on preliminary analysis of the previous wave(s), facilitated a detailed, iterative analysis. It also allowed emerging conclusions to be clarified and expanded in subsequent waves.

After all three waves of interviews were conducted and all interviews transcribed verbatim, the first author systematically analyzed the evolution of each student’s social experiences, compliance with the Pact, and reflections on it. The first author then employed an abductive approach, as described by Timmermans and Tavory (2012), to identify broad patterns across the sample. This method integrates established theory and research—in this case, Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) theory of color-blind racism and the literature on inequality in higher education (e.g., Armstrong and Hamilton 2013)—while remaining receptive to unexpected patterns in the data.

The first author shared analytic memos with the second author, who provided feedback at multiple stages of analysis. Additionally, the second author conducted a literature review, comparing the emerging findings with existing research on campus counterspaces, the experiences of students of color attending PWIs, and COVID-19’s impact on U.S. college students (e.g., Gilkes Borr 2019; Harper and Quaye 2007; Pan and Reyes 2021; Sanchez et al. 2022; van Stee 2023b). As we began to identify the organizational processes driving the unequal outcomes we observed, we realized that Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations could serve as a useful conceptual framework for interpreting these patterns. Throughout this process, we collaborated to identify and refine the categories of outcomes, mechanisms, and institutional characteristics presented in the following.

Findings

If measured by its public health impact, the Pact was an overwhelming success. There were fewer than 10 student COVID cases during the entire 2020–2021 academic year, and none turned into outbreaks. Unlike many other institutions, SLAC never came close to having to shut down its in-person courses. Most students credited the Pact for this. For instance, Amy, an upper-middle-class White woman, said in her first interview that she thought the rules were “keeping people safe, and it’s showing by how well we’re doing, because a lot of other colleges have already been sent home. Some of my friends [at other universities] have been sent home.” Many other students similarly compared their experiences at SLAC to those of friends attending other universities that either temporarily canceled classes or sent students home for the entire semester. Further attesting to the Pact’s efficacy, COVID surged at SLAC after the restrictions were lifted, with more than 15 percent of SLAC’s student body testing positive for COVID-19 in the first month. However, the social consequences of the Pact for first-year students, especially students of color, were severe.

Social Isolation in Residence Halls

All students noted that they felt they had fewer friends compared to students who entered SLAC after the Pact was removed. Even by their junior year interviews (Wave 3), most respondents stated that they still felt that they had fewer friends than they would have had without the Pact. For instance, Sarah, a White, lower-middle-class woman, explained,

I see the freshmen coming in now and they’ve got so many friends, so many different friends. And their FYP is really close, but then they also know a million other people. And I think that [freshman year] was the time that we were supposed to be making friends, and we weren’t able to. . . . I think outside of [my sports team], there’s not a ton of people that I know, and I don’t think that would’ve been the case if I came in and was able to interact with all these different people.

During a typical first year, students typically make friends by initiating casual moments of connection, such as inviting a classmate to eat in the dining hall or joining in-person student organizations. Neither of these options was available for students who started college under the Pact.

Although all students experienced social limitations under the Pact, racial disparities were apparent. White students, especially those who partied, typically felt more socially connected than Black and Latinx students did. And even those who were not at the center of their hall’s social scene typically made friends in their FYP cohort. Students of color tended to be far more isolated. Very few reported friendships in their FYP, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2.

Number of Friends in First-Year Program by Student Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity.

Race/Ethnicity	No Friends	A few Acquaintances	1–2 Friends	Small Group of Friends	Large Group of Friends	Total
White	2	3	2	3	10	20
Black	1	—	1	1	—	3
Latinx	—	1	1	—	1	3
Other	1	—	1	1	1	4

White students’ degree of social integration typically reflected their degree of alignment with the party culture of their dorm, echoing aspects of Armstrong and Hamilton’s (2013) observations among women attending a party-oriented state flagship. Half of the White students in our sample described immediately hitting it off with most of the other students on their hall and feeling they were part of the dominant friend group. For these students, the FYP really did act like a family unit. For instance, Jordan, a lower-middle-class White woman, explained:

So this is the silver lining: that COVID has picked [our friends] for us because we were only able to interact with people in our family unit. . . . We’re all so close. We’re just like a true family. We’re all really great friends. We just were watching the elections together in the lounge. I have my TV, I put it up. We play games like Among Us on our phones. We’ll do that after we get our work done. We eat together. . . . So yeah, without COVID we definitely wouldn’t be as close as we are.

Such experiences were not universal, even for White students. In contrast to Jordan’s experience, Becca, an upper-middle-class White woman who was in the same FYP that Jordan described as being “all really great friends,” indicated that she felt like she did not fit in. Becca described herself as being “very different” from most students on her floor because they were “very big drinkers and like to party a lot,” whereas she spent most of her time focusing on academics. Becca did have a social outlet outside of her FYP, however: her sports team, governed by more permissive rules.

Katherine, an upper-middle-class White woman in a different FYP, also felt isolated in her FYP due to the opposite problem from Becca in terms of party culture alignment. Katherine lamented that her dorm was “boring” compared to other dorms that were “popping.” Consequently, despite the Pact, Katherine frequently sought to escape her FYP members, whom she felt did not party enough, to seek excitement elsewhere—and she was successful (albeit in violation of the Pact).

Two of the 10 students of color in our sample, a working-class Latino man and a lower-middle-class multiracial (Black/White) man, felt much like Jordan. But for the other eight students of color, the question was not whether they were at the center of their hall’s social scene but rather whether they made any friends in their FYP at all.

When students of color made friends on their halls, it was typically with another student who shared their racial/ethnic identity. For instance, Nia, a lower-middle-class Black woman, reported that her friendships on the hall were exclusively with other students of color. As part of the HEOP program, Nia was allowed to move into the dorm two days early and was fortunate to have three other HEOP members, including two other Black students, on her floor—an unusual occurrence. However, the arrival of non-HEOP students two days later dramatically altered the atmosphere. Nia observed, “[T]here was a divide. There was a separation.”

During the first interview, two months into her first semester, Nia said, “I can still see the way [my White classmates] look at me and the way some people act towards me. That’s something that’s not going to go away.” In her sophomore interview, Nia reported developing acquaintances with some of the White students in her FYP but added that she did not regularly socialize with them.

Students of color without any same-race students on their hall typically did not make any friends among their FYP. Camila, a lower-middle-class Latina student, said she “was not super close” to anyone in her extended family unit. “Culturally speaking, I perceived that gap” between herself and the other students on her hall, Camila explained. She felt further excluded when her roommate unexpectedly moved in with another student without perceived warning or conflict.

The criteria for FYP hall placements were ostensibly race-neutral, and White students likely gave little thought to the racial composition of their floor. Thus, by disregarding racial composition in FYP placements, SLAC treated Whiteness as the default, and students of color paid the price.

Access to “Safe” Ways of Violating the Pact

Varsity sports: formal and informal protections

About 40 percent of the first-year class belonged to a varsity athletic team. Mirroring trends in selective universities nationwide, these teams were predominantly White (Hextrum 2020, 2023; Nelson et al. 2021; Selingo 2020). In our sample, 3 (of 10) students of color and 10 (of 20) White students were on a varsity team. Athletes benefited not only from more permissive rules for varsity teams compared to other campus groups but also from informal protections from coaches, which enabled teammates to break the Pact together without fear of punishment.

The Pact permitted varsity teams to practice together multiple times per week without submitting a safety plan. Players simply showed up to practice and spent several hours bonding with their teammates. Practices had looser rules about number of people, masking, and distancing. Additionally, beyond these formal protections, students described how coaches enabled and encouraged rule breaking outside of practices. For instance, Chase, an upper-middle-class White man, belonged to a sports team whose coach encouraged teammates to regularly spend time together outside of practice, including socializing maskless in the locker room, eating together in the dining hall, and partying in the senior on-campus townhouses. According to Chase, his coach encouraged the team to treat their group “like a bubble” in which the team—rather than the FYP specified by the Pact—would be its members’ primary social group. This effectively meant each member had two bubbles, the team and the FYP.

Varsity athletes regularly ate together in the dining hall, justifying this behavior as a natural extension of their practice time. Having found that she did not fit in with the partiers on her hall, Becca (upper-middle-class, White) discovered that her varsity team provided an alternative source of connection. In her first-year year interview, Becca said eating with her teammates instead of her FYP became second nature. During her sophomore year interview, she justified this behavior with reference to the fact that freshmen, unlike other students, had not selected their FYPs:

Especially for first years, [the rule] that you had to eat with your extended family unit was pretty much ridiculous. . . . I did not get along with mine at all. So I just felt like that was a little unreasonable. So I started eating with my team and people I had met outside of my family unit.

Becca also acknowledged attending parties with her sports team, a clear violation of the Pact.

In contrast, the organizations that students of color tended to participate in lacked such exceptions, whether formal or informal. Although HEOP students were allowed to move into the dorms two days early, all of their meetings took place over Zoom. Harmony, a Black, lower-middle-class woman, described being “on Zoom for three hours” with HEOP because they were not permitted to meet in person, which she said she “hated . . . so much.” HEOP students valued their cohort immensely but disliked spending additional time on Zoom and felt it did not facilitate deep bonding opportunities.

As the chilly fall gave way to a frigid winter on this rural northeastern campus, outdoor gatherings became increasingly untenable, further limiting opportunities for connection beyond one’s FYP. “You can’t eat together with people outside of your family unit,” Valentina, a working-class Latina woman, lamented during her first-year interview. She continued, “And considering that HEOP kids are spread all throughout campus, as well as other people that you meet along the way are spread throughout campus, it’s hard to spend time with them—especially now that it’s getting colder.” Thus, although the athletic exception and HEOP nonexception made no mention of race, they effectively created a racially unequal distribution of resources—specifically, the resource of face-to-face social connection.

Off-campus adventures

Beyond a coach’s protection, another factor that made students feel relatively safe breaking the Pact was the ability to leave campus, where SLAC relied on students’ voluntary compliance rather than surveillance to ensure they followed the rules. White students’ relative wealth and greater access to friends with wealth provided them greater access to off-campus adventures. For instance, Delaney, an upper-middle-class White woman, regularly left campus with her friend group to stay at an expensive ski resort or visit a peer’s family’s second home in the Adirondack mountains. She explained,

One of my friends in that extended family, his dad has a little [cabin] right by campus. So we’d often go there and make a bonfire and hang out if we needed a break from being in the dorm rooms. . . . I did go to Whiteface [ski resort] quite a bit, which . . . I know that was out of the county [and, therefore, breaking the Pact]. I feel like that really helped my mental health, at least just being able to go ski because it’s always been such a big part of my life.

In contrast, Harmony, the lower-middle-class Black woman who decried the three-hour HEOP meetings said, “I didn’t realize how stuck I would be [on campus]. Because I don’t have a car or anything. I knew I would be in the middle of nowhere, but I didn’t realize I’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere—like, I really can’t go anywhere.”

Not every White student had a car, and not all of them had grown up with skiing a big part of their lives. However, those with fewer resources were more likely than students of color to make wealthier friends with resources such as cars, vacation homes, or money to pay for ski passes. Thus, although all students were nominally subject to the same rules, there was a significant discrepancy between formal policies and organizational practices along racial lines, mirroring the informal protections afforded to predominantly White varsity sports teams. The result was greater social freedom for White students, whereas students of color faced more restrictions and scrutiny in on-campus spaces like the Student Center.

Visibility and Surveillance

The Pact’s enforcement fell primarily to three groups: university security, students working as community assistants (CAs) in the residence halls, and students hired to work as Pact ambassadors (PAs). PA was a new position created in spring 2021; non-first-year students were hired to educate the student body about the Pact and remind them to comply with it. University security and CAs were required to do rounds in all the residence halls and other places around campus to patrol for safety and security concerns, including violations of the Pact. The dining hall had no official enforcement regiment, but CAs might notice students sitting with people not in their family unit. As with any policing role, enforcers could exercise discretion in approaching students and issuing warnings or violations.

No one in the study got in serious trouble. Approximately half received verbal warnings, and less than a quarter received an official violation in the system. However, there were racial differences in the extent to which students perceived strict versus loose enforcement. Many students of color reported feeling under constant surveillance, particularly those with darker skin, who felt conspicuous in the dining hall and around campus. As Nia, a working-class Black woman, explained in her first-year interview,

I mean, honestly, the most [often I’m stared at] is in [the dining hall] . . . I’m tall, I’m five 11, basically six feet. I’m a dark-skinned woman. . . . So regardless, I’m going to stand out no matter what. So it’s just like, I can just feel the eyes just watching me.”

Roxana (Middle Eastern/White), the sole upper-middle-class student in our sample who did not identify as only White, described herself as “hyper-aware” of her darker skin tone, noting that “everyone is five shades lighter” than herself at SLAC.

Although officials could not memorize every family unit, violations by darker-skinned students eating together were more noticeable given that all first-year family units were majority White. Consequently, while a table of White students from different family units raised no suspicion, a large group of non-White students would. Julian, a working-class Latino man, considered the prospect of eating with his HEOP friends risky, noting, “The CAs, they definitely know who I am, where I live.”

Students of color also reported being disproportionately targeted for minor infractions. For example, Julian recounted repeated confrontations with a PA over improper mask wearing while spending time with HEOP friends in the Student Center. Julian explained,

Like me sipping water, doing my work and just forgetting to put [the mask] all the way up. And they’ll come up to me, like, “Hey, mask!” . . . [S]ome PAs were a lot nicer than others. Others were very much like, “Put your mask on now.” Others are like, “Hey, your mask is down. Do you mind [putting it up]?” . . . I think one PA started coming around, at least twice a week . . . the one person that would always catch me. So at that point, he kind of knew, “Huh, he probably has his mask down over there. Let me go tell him [to put it back on].”

Although Julian never received official reports for these minor infractions, the experience of surveillance was stressful. Our interviews suggest that improper mask wearing was common among students, especially men, but White students did not describe feeling targeted. In contrast, White students described feeling like they blended in. For instance, Aly, a White, upper-middle-class woman with light hair and skin, stated in her first interview that she visited other dorms—a clear violation of the Pact—because “people can’t tell if you’re from there or not.” Dark-skinned students did not feel they blended in in this way.

Strikingly, many White interviewees seemed oblivious to enforcement by student workers. One upper-middle-class White man, Wyatt, outright rejected the idea, arguing that enforcing rules among peers would be “social suicide. . . . [E]ven the CAs knew that if they went around and were really harsh about masks, like, they would just get roasted and no one would hang out with them, even when [the semester] was done.” In stark contrast, students of color were acutely aware of peer monitoring.

Thus, White students benefited from the privilege of “blending in.” The relatively separate social lives of students of color in this racialized campus context likely increased their visibility because groups of minority students in close proximity would draw even more attention than lone individuals. As a result, students of color confronted a dilemma: either risk the consequences of breaking the rules under heightened scrutiny or retreat from visible campus spaces, risking greater social isolation.

Stakes of Violation

Ostensibly, the stakes of breaking the Pact were the same for all students: loss of financial aid and removal from campus without reimbursement. Yet the interviews revealed stark racial disparities in students’ perceptions of these risks. White students consistently expressed minimal concern about potential consequences. In fact, by the spring semester of their first year, many had become so complacent that they had forgotten several rules. For instance, Chase, an athlete who regularly ate with his team, had forgotten doing so was a violation of the Pact until the interviewer reminded him. He repeatedly used the word “technically” in acknowledging that this and eating with others outside of his FYP was a way in which he violated the Pact, suggesting he did not take the rules at all seriously.

White students were certain they were unlikely to get sent home. In her second interview, Leah, a middle-class White woman, summarized her approach to the Pact thus: “Overall, I was following it enough that I didn’t feel like I was nervous about getting kicked off [campus] or anything.” Others nonchalantly dismissed having to run from campus police breaking up a party as an inconvenience.

Kendall, an upper-middle-class White woman, demonstrated a similar lack of concern even after receiving an official violation. Caught in another dormitory by her own CA during rounds, Kendall was required to meet with the residential coordinator of the FYP dormitories. Recounting this meeting with notable flippancy during her first-year interview, Kendall said,

She [was] like, “Oh don’t do it again.” Blah blah. And I was like, “Okay. I promise I wasn’t doing anything bad. I’m just trying to get my ID” [after forgetting her ID in a jacket she loaned to a student in another dormitory]. But it was like a misunderstanding.”

Kendall described the meeting as “frustrating,” but she was clearly unshaken by it. Indeed, Kendall admitted in the same interview that she continued to break the Pact regularly, including by eating dinner with her sports team. She believed everyone else was doing the same: “I think people eat with whoever now.” The official meeting and warning did not leave Kendall feeling threatened—just annoyed.

Students of color, in contrast, typically felt that there was much more at stake. Harmony, a lower-middle-class Black woman, exemplifies this heightened concern. She cited the risk of expulsion and losing her financial aid as major factors in her strict adherence to the Pact during her first semester. She resisted the temptation to visit HEOP students in other dorms, explaining that she “always wait[ed] until I can go legally” because “I do not want to be kicked out.” Harmony typically limited her socializing to Pact-compliant activities like studying with friends in the library or small, masked gatherings in the Student Center.

The financial concerns Harmony cited were absent even from the accounts of less affluent White students.¹ For example, Jordan, a lower-middle-class White student, expressed confidence in the leniency of campus administrators, stating that they “don’t want to kick students off . . . [they are] trying to be as understanding as possible.” Such contrasting views highlight the racialized nature of students’ perceptions of authority figures in the campus environment. They suggest that students of color were afraid not only because of economic considerations but also because of broader racial processes of unequal policing and other systemic injustices fostering institutional distrust.

Students of color also expressed heightened anxiety about interactions with campus security. For instance, by the spring semester, Nia, a Black woman from a highly policed low-income neighborhood in New York City, reported that she was breaking the Pact almost daily to spend time with students of color in older grades. Even so, Nia went to lengths to stay out of view of university enforcement. For example, she only visited older students living in houses where campus security did not conduct rounds, avoiding the heavily monitored dorms. When asked about outdoor partying without masks, a common practice among White students, Harmony emphatically stated, “I don’t like putting myself in situations where cam-po is involved. So like, I will never [attend those parties], no.”

Conversely, White students did not express apprehension about law enforcement, and their encounters with campus security caused little distress. Some treated evading security as a game, routinely fleeing from officers at outdoor parties to avoid ID checks and violations. Jordan (lower-middle-class, White) described this as a “tradition,” explaining:

“People who run from security—and I’ve seen so many chases now, [at] parties at the fire pits out back. Lots of kids congregate there. And so, security pulled up so many times, just every weekend, [it was] a tradition every week . . . [security would] pull up and did have to break people apart.

Likely because they lacked previous negative experiences with law enforcement, White students felt little was at stake in possible encounters with university security.

The Pact was lifted at the end of the summer of 2021, but the Wave 2 and Wave 3 interviews speak to its enduring impact on the sense of safety and belonging on campus in students of color. Many described a persistent sense of not belonging at SLAC, sometimes explicitly linking these feelings to negative experiences related to the Pact. Among these, McKenna, a multiracial (Native/Asian) student who experienced panic attacks her first year related to her fear of violating the Pact, illustrates the Pact’s lasting imprint. McKenna recounted an incident during her junior year when her team got in trouble due to another teammate’s excessive drinking. This punishment immediately triggered memories of getting in trouble for violating the Pact, causing McKenna to spiral back into the same state of anxiety from her first year. She recalled: “When [our team] got in trouble again this past fall, I went right back to that first time I got in trouble and it was just like the same feeling of like, ‘I can’t screw up, I can’t do this. I have to think about every single action.’” Unlike White students, who did not report a shaken sense of belonging during or after the Pact, McKenna’s sense of belonging remained tenuous more than a year and a half after the Pact was lifted.

Discussion

Three waves of yearly interviews with 30 undergraduates at a rural liberal arts college revealed dramatic racial disparities in students’ experiences of a policy seemingly unrelated to race. How did this occur? In what follows, we discuss how specific elements of this ostensibly race-neutral policy interacted with underlying racism embedded in the institution and broader society to produce racially unequal outcomes.

The racially disparate social consequences of the Pact manifested in four main domains of campus life: (1) social isolation in residence halls, (2) access to “safe” forms of rule breaking, (3) visibility and surveillance, and (4) stakes of violation. In the following sections, we discuss how specific organizational mechanisms—unequal resource allocation, uneven rule enforcement, and color-blind decision-making—drove these outcomes. Finally, we identify distinct organizational characteristics of SLAC that facilitated these processes and consider their theoretical relevance to other higher education contexts.

Organizational Mechanisms

The first mechanism driving the outcomes we observed is inequality in formal resource allocation. Predominantly White varsity sports teams received exceptions for large in-person gatherings, whereas HEOP, which serves students of color, did not. All HEOP respondents identified fellow HEOP students as their closest friends, yet the Pact’s social restrictions severely constrained the program’s capacity to facilitate connections and belonging among its members. A growing body of research highlights the critical importance of counterspaces for students of color at PWIs (e.g., Deckman 2022; Guiffrida 2003; Keels 2020), and our study starkly illustrates the consequences of limiting their activity.

The second mechanism is unequal rule enforcement. Beyond formal protections, athletes benefited from uneven rule enforcement because coaches often shielded team members beyond official exemptions, providing even more opportunities for social connection beyond one’s residence hall. Further illustrating the Pact’s uneven enforcement, White students had greater access to unsupervised off-campus socialization facilitated by family wealth. Notably, even less affluent White students benefited indirectly from wealthier peers’ resources through social connections, illustrating how class and race intersected to shape students’ disparate experiences.

Such unequal rule enforcement also extended to gatherings on campus. Even when students were in common campus spaces, such as the dorms, cafeteria, or student center, ostensibly equally under the watch of campus authorities, the level of surveillance experienced fell along racial lines. The underrepresentation of students of color on SLAC’s campus heightened their visibility (Ray and Rosow 2012) while White students enjoyed the privilege of “blending in,” exemplified by the upper-middle-class White student Aly’s assertion that “people can’t tell” whether you live in one dorm or another. This is true at SLAC only if you are White.

Uneven rule enforcement exemplifies one dimension of Ray’s (2019) concept of racialized decoupling, illustrating his observation that “‘Objective’ rules and practices may be enforced in ways that disadvantage non-Whites” (Ray 2019:42). It also illustrates the credentialing of Whiteness. As Ray (2019:43) observes, credentials have the potential to “shield [a person] from the consequences of rule-breaking”—and indeed, we found this to be the case at SLAC. Whereas being in the numerical minority contributed to the visibility of students of color, persistent cultural schemas associating White bodies with innocence and Black and Brown bodies with criminality and illegality transformed this visibility into intensified surveillance (Eastman 2015; Menjívar 2021; Muhammad 2010). White students benefited from the invisibility of Whiteness, which functioned as a tacit credential of innocence (Ray 2019).

These disparities in surveillance align with consistent research findings that even under normal circumstances, students of color at PWIs experience disproportionate scrutiny and profiling (Bonilla-Silva and Peoples 2022; Mills 2020; Smith et al. 2007; Torres and Charles 2004). The Pact appears to have intensified these dynamics by introducing additional rules to enforce and involving peers in the enforcement process. As Lewis and Diamond (2015:48) observe in the context of K–12 education, “disciplinary routines communicate key messages to students about who is and is not a full citizen within the school context.” Our interviews provide strong evidence that experiences of surveillance under the Pact, including peer surveillance, undermined a sense of belonging among highly scrutinized students of color—which, as McKenna’s experience illustrates, could persist long after the Pact was lifted.

The final mechanism is color-blind decision-making. In articulating this mechanism, we draw from Ray and Purifoy’s (2019) discussion of color-blind organizations, in which they link Bonilla Silva’s (2003) color-blind frames to organizational processes. We focus on two frames: cultural racism and the minimization of racism. In the former, Whiteness is treated as the “unspoken standard” against which non-White organizational members are measured (Ray and Purifoy 2019:142). In the latter, powerful organizational actors dismiss members’ allegations of racism (Ray and Purifoy 2019:143). We observe elements of both in the Pact.

Although the Pact addressed a novel problem, it exemplified a broader pattern of treating White students’ perspectives and experiences as the unspoken standard and of neglecting to consider the impacts of racism. In a PWI like SLAC, White students likely give little thought to their floor’s racial composition because they will always be in the majority. The administration’s decision to assign floors—effectively determining students’ close contacts for the entire year—based on broad academic interests thus privileged White students’ experiences and interests while neglecting the potential impact on students of color.

Students’ experiences with campus security reveal a similar pattern of normalized—and thus privileged—Whiteness. Beyond experiencing disproportionate surveillance, which increased the chances of getting caught, students of color were differentially affected emotionally by both actual and anticipated interactions with Pact enforcement personnel—they perceived greater stakes of getting caught. By ignoring racism, particularly how broader disparities in policing might affect how Black and Brown students experienced the Pact’s enforcement structures, SLAC made them vulnerable to emotional distress that their White peers did not report. Thus, the Pact’s heightened monitoring, including new forms of peer oversight, had unequal impacts across racial lines.

Beyond the Case

This article describes the consequences of specific policies at a particular university during an atypical time period. However, the mechanisms we observed have broader theoretical relevance, particularly to U.S. colleges and universities that share the organizational characteristics we found important at SLAC. In the following, we highlight three such characteristics: the White demographic majority, the privileged status of varsity sports, and the tight correlation of class and racial privilege.

White demographic majority

Demographic composition played a crucial role in creating the conditions for the patterns we observed. Although simply increasing diversity would not solve the problems we identified (Bonilla-Silva and Peoples 2022), numbers do matter. The White majority set the stage for students of color to be highly visible on campus and thinly dispersed across residence halls (Nelson et al. 2021; Ray and Rosow 2012). Despite non-Hispanic White young adults comprising just over 50 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds nationally in 2020 (U.S. Census Bureau 2023), this demographic accounted for over 80 percent of SLAC’s 2020–2021 first-year class. Although this imbalance undoubtedly reflects broader systems affecting college preparation and access (Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Reardon and Owens 2014), universities actively shape their student bodies through funding, recruitment, and admissions decisions (Nelson et al. 2021). Thus, the Whiteness of SLAC should be understood as neither inevitable nor innocuous (Nguemeni Tiako et al. 2022).

Privileged status of varsity sports

Mirroring broader trends in college sports, we observe privilege in both the composition of SLAC’s sports teams and their status on campus. Despite heightened media attention to Black football and basketball players, other college athletic teams tend to be disproportionately White and affluent (Hextrum 2020, 2023; Jack 2024; Nelson et al. 2021; Tompsett et al. 2023). At SLAC, as at many other universities, varsity teams enjoy high social status and benefit from institutional resource allocation (Jack 2019; Nelson et al. 2021; Selingo 2020). In other institutions where these privileges align, varsity sports are likely to be sites of racial inequality, even absent pandemic-related social restrictions—and especially when paired with a lack of consideration or resources for organizations serving minority students (Ray and Rosow 2010).

Additionally, although the students in our study were too young to have participated in Greek life during their first year, because SLAC does not allow students to join Greek life until their second year, the higher education literature suggests notable parallels between varsity sports and Greek life (Armstrong and Hamilton 2013). Both systems predominantly cater to White students and often enjoy significant institutional privileges. (White) Greek organizations frequently benefit from selective enforcement of disciplinary measures, mirroring the informal protections we observed for varsity athletes (Ray and Rosow 2010), and this may have affected students older than our participants.

Class and race

The tight coupling of social class and race in SLAC’s student body likely intensified the segregated social dynamics we observed. Although we follow Torres (2024) in viewing racism as ultimately inseparable from class inequality, we pursue analytic precision by identifying distinct proximate mechanisms of racism in this campus context. Our analysis suggests that students’ experiences of social (dis)connection in residence halls and unequal access to safer rule-breaking opportunities were closely tied to social class inequality, whereas surveillance and perceived stakes were more directly driven by biases cued by race-related phenotypical differences and long-standing racial injustices in policing.

The correlation of class and race in SLAC’s student body effectively created two distinct student populations with vastly different precollege experiences: White students from relatively privileged backgrounds, familiar with the dominant and expensive leisure activities around this rural liberal arts setting (e.g., skiing and hiking), and students of color from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, primarily recruited from New York City through the HEOP program. This stark contrast in backgrounds and experiences likely contributed to social segregation and challenges in cross-group connections, intensifying the social isolation experienced by students of color assigned to majority White halls (Torres 2009).

Importantly, class resources extend beyond financial means (Armstrong and Hamilton 2013; Charles et al. 2022; Jack 2019; Stuber 2011; Torres 2009). Although lacking funds for expensive social activities like a ski trip can indeed contribute to social exclusion, class privilege also provides social and cultural tools—such as familiarity with institutional norms, conversational styles, and cultural references—that ease navigation of the college environment.

SLAC lacks a significant population of socioeconomically privileged minority students, precluding firm conclusions about how class resources might have shaped different experiences for such students. However, existing research indicates that socioeconomically privileged students of color attending PWIs benefit from familiarity with elite institutional norms and upper-middle-class cultural repertoires (Charles et al. 2022; Jack 2019; Jack and Bassett 2024; Jack and Black 2022). This body of work further supports the interpretation that the tight coupling of class and race at SLAC amplified social segregation for students of color, who occupied a doubly marginalized position.

At the same time, the literature emphasizes that class privilege does not eliminate racism; socioeconomically advantaged students of color still experience racial stereotyping, othering, and heightened scrutiny (Charles et al. 2022; Jack 2024; Pan and Reyes 2021; Torres and Charles 2004). In our study, the surveillance experienced by students of color likely reflects racial biases triggered by students’ physical appearances (Correll et al. 2002). Illustrating the salience of race-related phenotypical characteristics regardless of class resources, Roxana, the sole upper-middle-class student who did not identify only as White, was acutely aware that most of her peers were “five shades lighter” than herself. Despite class privilege, Roxana did not feel that she blended in at SLAC.

The fact that lower-middle-class White students did not voice the same fears regarding Pact enforcement as lower-middle-class students of color further demonstrates that the racial disparities we observed cannot be reduced to class-based inequalities. It suggests that the unequal stakes perceived by students were further influenced by unequal policing and other systemic racial injustices instilling institutional distrust (Alexander 2020; Cox 2024; Decoteau and Sweet 2023; Shedd 2015).

Conclusion

The 2020–2021 academic year presented unprecedented challenges for higher education institutions, and the Pact was an unconventional response to these conditions. Yet the inequalities it exposed and reproduced were long-standing, and the organizational characteristics that facilitated these processes predated the pandemic and are not unique to this campus. Although the Pact presented a novel research opportunity, the implications of our analysis extend far beyond this historical moment and this particular institution. The organizational processes we identified have broader theoretical relevance, particularly to U.S. colleges and universities that share key organizational characteristics with SLAC. We encourage others to build on our findings to investigate organizational mechanisms of racial inequality in other higher education contexts and explore how variations in organizational characteristics may yield different processes and outcomes. Ultimately, we hope that such research will inform organizational procedures that actively challenge existing racial hierarchies.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Victor Ray, Jack Thornton, Sarah Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Education and Inequality Workshop members for their helpful advice and feedback on this project. We would also like to thank Adi Jalinskas, Laura Wells, Rebecca Caudill, Sophia Brigante, Olivia Light, Rebecca Brown, Sara McCauley, Myklynn LaPoint, Elias Stowell, Anastasia Gkioura, Ellie Purgavie, and Marie Bank for their research assistance and Kate Epstein for her editorial assistance. Claude 3 Sonnet and Grammarly were used for editing, nongenerative purposes in the preparation of this article.

Funding

Elena van Stee was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the Institute of Education Sciences under Award R3505B200035 to the University of Pennsylvania. The opinions expressed are the authors’ and do not represent the views of the Institute of Education Sciences or the U.S. Department of Education.

ORCID iDs

Alanna Gillis

Elena G. van Stee

Notes

Author Biographies

Alanna Gillis an assistant professor of sociology at St. Lawrence University. She studies race, class, and gender inequality in higher education, focusing on student experiences in college and their pathway through and beyond higher education. Her work has been published in journals including Sociological Forum, Qualitative Sociology, Socius, and Journal of Postsecondary Student Success, among others.

Elena G. van Stee is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an Exchange Scholar at Harvard University. She is also the Blog Editor for Contexts, ASA’s public-facing periodical. Elena studies culture and inequality, focusing on families, education, and young adulthood. Her research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences. It has been published in journals including Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal for the Social Scientific Study of Religion, and Annual Review of Sociology.

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