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Considering Race and Space: MappingDevelopmental Approaches for ProvidingCulturally Responsive AdvisingRoland W. Mitchell a , Gerald K. Wood b & Noelle Witherspoon aa Louisiana State Universityb University of Northern ArizonaPublished online: 05 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Roland W. Mitchell , Gerald K. Wood & Noelle Witherspoon (2010) ConsideringRace and Space: Mapping Developmental Approaches for Providing Culturally Responsive Advising,Equity & Excellence in Education, 43:3, 294-309, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2010.496691

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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 43(3), 294–309, 2010Copyright C© University of Massachusetts Amherst School of EducationISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10665684.2010.496691

Considering Race and Space: Mapping DevelopmentalApproaches for Providing Culturally Responsive Advising

Roland W. MitchellLouisiana State University

Gerald K. WoodUniversity of Northern Arizona

Noelle WitherspoonLouisiana State University

This exploratory essay critically examines how social relations structure the production of space ona college campus. In particular, we analyze how the organization of one particular site—the studentadvising office at a southeastern university—calls attention to the relationship between race and spacein ways that re-inscribe narrow definitions of academic advising that are tied to the larger context ofthe universities and that continue to exclude students of color. Consequently, through this article, weuse the university academic advising office as an example of a reified racialized space. To this end,by applying Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) concept of critical geography, discourse analysis, and criticalrace theory to a specific advising session between a black advisor and a black student, we provide alens to analyze this norming of space within the constraints of a prescriptive approach to advising.The results from our inquiry suggest that institutional interpretations of race have significant materialand psychic consequences for the ways that students of color experience schooling in majority whitecontexts. If higher education is truly committed to addressing the remnants of its racially exclusivepast, these areas must be better understood and addressed.

The study of the US’s higher education system is rife with research that chronicles colleges’and universities’ constantly evolving endeavors to provide service to an increasingly racially andculturally diverse student population (Anderson, 1988; Chang, 2001; Watkins, 2001, 2005). Fromhigher education’s colonial roots to its segregationist-era and subsequent opening to people ofcolor in the twentieth century, this has been contentious work. Although colleges and universitieshave experienced moderate success at providing greater access to students of color, there is nowa growing need for expanded research on how to meet the educational needs of students of

Address correspondence to Roland W. Mitchell, College of Education, Educational Theory, Policy, and Practice,Louisiana State University, 121 D Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. E-mail: rwmitch@lsu.edu

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color once they arrive on predominantly white campuses. This arrival of groups who have beenhistorically excluded has created a unique dilemma for both those in power and those who havebeen traditionally marginalized. On one hand, it is assumed that inclusion of these marginalizedgroups signals an increase in diversity of the organization and agency for the marginalized; onthe other hand, structures and policies have not become more open or accessible. Our recognitionof this circumstance leads us to ask what happens when students of color operate in spacesill-prepared and unreserved for them.

Against this backdrop, this exploratory essay is primarily concerned with the understandingsand insights that enable an academic advising office, situated on a majority white campus, to serveblack students in a manner that disrupts pervasive patterns of low retention (Allen, Jayakumar,Griffin, Korn, & Hurtado, 2005), low achievement (Gallien & Peterson, 2004), and low levels ofsatisfaction (Utsey, Ponterotto, Reynolds, & Cancelli, 2000). Specifically, the lead author servedas an academic advisor with the supporting authors studying and serving as graduate teachingassistants in similar contexts where they regularly watched black students struggle regardless ofeach of the author’s best efforts to individually establish the types of mentoring, and specificallyfor the purposes of this essay, academic advising relationships that the literature supports. Hence,the unit of analysis for our essay moves beyond individual student-to-advisor interactions to amore systemic advisor-to-student-to-institution analysis.

In tandem with critical race theory (CRT), we turn to Foucault’s (1977) discussion ofBentham’s Panopticon (1798) and to critical geography (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994) toestablish our conceptual framework. These intersecting concepts enabled us to analyze therelationship between the normative production of space and the exclusion of black studentswithin the context of efficiency-minded approaches to advising. We found that Foucault’s workregarding discursive practices and critical geography highlights the ways that practices withinthe advising office emphasize expediency and efficiency over meeting the diverse needs of stu-dents of color. The organization of an advising office, with an emphasis on standardization andefficiency, closely parallels Foucault’s (1977) discussion of the Panopticon in which surveil-lance and categorization are central aspects of implementing control. Bentham’s work primarilyfocused on the ways that the actual construction and design of prisons functioned to bring tobear the power of the institution over an individual, and through his use of Bentham’s ideas,Foucault argues that this power is in both the construction of guard towers and surveillance tech-nologies as well as institutional practices, practices, that in our case, universities/bureaucraciesadhere to.

Consequently, this exploratory essay conducts inquiry into the practical knowledge that enableseducators to provide service to black students in predominantly white contexts. We closelyscrutinize the ways in which the bureaucratic structures, educational philosophies, and the actualarchitecture of predominantly white institutions (PWIs) hinder their alleged commitment to meetthe needs of black students. To do this, the essay is divided into three sections. The first sectionexplores the existing literature on race and racism on college campuses and how it informs theacademic support that black students receive at PWIs. We then discuss the ways that specificapproaches to advising hinder the university’s ability to provide meaningful service to blackstudents. Next, we provide an illustration of the complications associated with race and space inan advising office, and we conclude with suggestions for improving service to black students atPWIs.

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A LITERATURE REVIEW OF RACE, SPACE, AND DISCOURSE

In their basic explanations, critical geographers have theorized space, both physically and con-ceptually, through social relations and social practice in particular social spaces (Helfenbein,2006; Lefebvre, 1991). In order to discuss the relationship between the normative production ofspace and the exclusion of students of color, we drew from an intersection of ideas in CRT andcritical geography. More specifically, understanding the “raced” nature of space highlights thatspaces are not race-neutral and, thus, serve to entrap individuals of color in certain racializedrepresentations, roles, contracts, hierarchies, and other hegemonic processes.

CRT places issues associated with race at the center of US society (Crenshaw, 1991)—meaningthat when taking account of vital indicators of the well-being of a specific segment of the USpopulation (e.g., access to health care, percentage of children born into poverty, chronic diseaserates, incarceration rates), CRT suggests that the influence of race/racism is an indispensablefactor (Marable & Mullings, 2000). Consequently, CRT is positioned as a framework that can beused to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways that race and racism implicitly and explicitlyimpact social structures, practices, and discourses (Yosso, 2005). Researchers who ground theirwork in CRT principles take the position that instances of racial bias are not exceptions toregular human behavior, but are the norm. According to CRT, racism is best conceptualized asa chronic social disease with specific historical foundations, ontological implications, and re-occurring systemic manifestations (Crenshaw, 1991). CRT has been described as a frameworkfor analyzing and exploring race and racism in the law and the broader society (Lynn & Parker,2006). Hence, at its most basic conceptualization, “CRT offers scholars and theorists analyticaland methodological tools to make sense of certain racialized policies, practices, and problems”(Lynn & Bridges, 2009, p. 340). CRT presents white supremacy as an essential part of dominantEurocentric paradigms that are typically given precedence over the cultural norms most closelyassociated with communities of people of color.

Theorist Daniel Solorzano (1997) identified five tenets of CRT that can and should informtheory, research, pedagogy, curriculum, and policy: (1) the intercentricity of race and racism,(2) the challenge to dominant ideology, (3) the commitment to social justice, (4) the centralityof experiential knowledge, and (5) the utilization of interdisciplinary approaches. Also, CRThighlights the omnipresence of institutional racism that operates unquestioned through normativeprocedures and practices. Our analysis does not necessarily focus on intentionally racist beliefsor practices, such as the rash of hangman’s nooses that showed up on several black facultymembers’ doors across the nation in the wake of the Jena 6 trial (Simmons, 2007), but rather fromthe standpoint that racism flows from and results in deeply embedded policies and procedures thatappear to operate as race neutral (Noguera, 2001). Furthermore, our research also underscoresthe reality that having advisors of color does not protect against these institutionalized practices.Consequently, CRT affords vital tools for the deconstruction of white, male, technocratic, andnormed epistemologies, descriptors, and narrow articulations of advisement in predominantlywhite institutions. Hence, as a primary thesis of this article, we conceptualize race as a powerfuldiscursive force in the experiences of black students and educators in predominantly whitespaces.

In critical geography, space is defined as a product of social relations that reflects thehegemony of dominant ideologies (Lefebvre, 1991). In particular, Lefebvre underscores three

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intersecting concepts while theorizing space: (a) spatial practices, (b) representations of space, and(c) representational spaces. For the purposes of our discussion of the role of race and place inone particular student advising office, we interpret “spatial practices” to include the everydaypractices of advising, such as the location of the student advising office in an academic buildingthat is open from the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., the directing of black students to the soleblack advisor, mandatory sessions around registration time, the assignment of more experiencedadvisors to more traditional disciplines, the layout of the advising cubicles that allow for regula-tion (such as the monitoring of time allotted for each session or acceptable discussion topics), andthe policing and surveillance of interactions between advisors and advisees. Lefebvre’s conceptof “representations of space” draws attention to how the hegemonic techno-bureaucratic languagestipulated in the student advising policies supports a rigid, standardized approach to advising.Mandatory meetings, the restrictive time allotments for each advising session, and the divisionof disciplines based on the distribution of students in the College of Arts and Sciences are allconceptual representations that are implemented through the spatial practices of the advisingoffice. And finally, we interpret “representational spaces” as tied to a symbolic (often violent)experiencing of space whereby black students felt they were not being served. Through theseexperiences, it is then possible to identify how prescriptive models of advising primarily impactstudents of color that seek open-mindedness, sensitivity, and responsiveness in their academicadvisors (Padilla & Pavel, 1994) and may be fore-grounded in offering an analysis of the existingspatial practices and discourses.

THE PROBLEMS WITH A STANDARDIZED APPROACH TO ADVISINGA DIVERSE GROUP OF STUDNETS

We believe that a history of exclusion is present in the policies and practices that impact theexperiences of black students in predominantly white college campuses. By looking at one spe-cific instance of how a black student interacts with and negotiates a student advising office, (aswe will shortly) it is possible to identify the spatial practices and representations of space thatimpact a student’s understandings of the student advising office as a racially coded space. Innaming these institutional practices and official discourses, it is possible to analyze the waysin which this organization of space serves to reproduce a more authoritarian approach to ad-vising that curtails other possibilities that would support more student-friendly approaches toadvising.

The ideas developed in this article are supported by a discursive analysis of the racializedexperiences of students of color at PWIs. A discursive analysis conducts inquiry into the processby which cultural meanings are both produced and understood (Weedon, 1997). Discourse, asthe theorist Foucault (1977) uses the term, refers to the system of symbols, signs, and mean-ings through which a particular topic or issue is understood by a given social group. Our useof Foucault’s definition of discourse affords a conceptual bridge between systemic/institutionaldynamics and individual student subjectivities. In short, this way of conceiving of discourse isuniquely situated to understand the ways that individual students of color experience the brunt ofinstitutional racism in predominantly white educational contexts. Additionally, our applicationof a discursive analysis to the relationship between race/racism and institutional structures and

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practices is reminiscent of a conception of race and space that asserts that understandings associ-ated with racial identity shift depending on the contexts/spaces in which they are being interpreted(Hall, 1996).

The university we are studying, like many of its peer institutions in the region, has a welldocumented history of resisting the inclusion of black students. This history is replete withbuildings erected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century commemorating Confederategenerals, Klansman, and other documented white supremacists. Numerous newsreels and pressreports of Civil Rights Era marches and sit-ins support our framing of this university as a keybattleground for the nation concerning the racial integration of American colleges and universities.The university’s struggles with coming to terms with the end of Jim Crow laws were markedby an infamous show down between the then-governor of the state, university officials, andrepresentatives of the federal government. The legacy of these turbulent times still resonateson the campus and, subsequently, we found the university to be a particularly rich location forexamining race and space.

For example, a building on the campus once housed slaves, and although the building no longerserves its original purpose, the lingering effects of some racial/racist policies and practices arestill operative, despite the institutions’ new contexts/space, policies, and practices. As a result ofthe dramatic change in discursively mediated understandings of race and racism on this campusand in society in general, highly-charged debates about how to interpret the commemoration ofthis building are deeply ensconced within evolving university discourses about race, space and,ultimately, how the university wants to represent itself.

Cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall (1996) terms this way of highlighting the constantly(re)negotiated meanings associated with race, as race “floating,” free of any transcendental realitythat might stabilize its meaning. Despite the constantly shifting meaning of race in universitycontexts, we, like Hall, recognize the socially constructed and historically situated nature ofinstitutionalized racial understandings. Further, we support Hall’s assertion that the constantly(re)negotiated institutional interpretations of race have significant consequences for the waysthat black students experience this campus and other institutions. Further, we believe that theseracially informed discourses constitute a field of power that encodes the interests of variousconstituencies, are the site of ongoing contestation, and significantly influence decision-makingstructures within higher education.

Our analysis of these structures is taken from the perspective of a black academic advisor andis part of a larger previously published, yet ongoing autoethnographic study of educators whoprovide service to students of color in predominantly white contexts (Mitchell & Roisek, 2005).While the earlier study set out to examine the micro-level interactions that shape the ways thatblack people work together in majority white spaces, this piece of the narrative was analyzed toforward a macro-level structural framework for conducting empirical research on the influence ofinstitutional racism. Therefore, whereas the initial study examined the auto ethnographic lens ofindividual interactions between the student and the advisor, this article provides further analysisthat seeks to understand the systemic discourses that establish the space/setting in which theblack advisor and black student are interacting. By considering this instance of advising througha discursive analysis, we seek to understand the bureaucratic and symbolic structures that makethe advising office, in particular, and PWIs, in general, unwelcoming spaces for many people ofcolor (Seifert, Drummond, & Pascarella, 2006).

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RACED SPACE AND ACADEMIC ADVISING

Traditionally, academic advising has been listed as a top concern of students of color, with nosingle student service being mentioned more frequently as an effective means of promotingretention and success (Fries-Britt & Turner, 2001; Harper & Quaye, 2009; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh,Whitt, & Associates, 2005; Nettles, Theony, & Gosman, 1986). However, among their concerns,many students of color report that they do not feel comfortable working with white advisors(Gilbert, 2003). Acknowledging this tension between the comfort of students with cross-culturaladvisement and the realities associated with the limitations of institutional racial diversity iscritical as it draws attention to the notion that the very thing that students of color considerto be crucial to their success—academic advising—is complicated by America’s sordid legacyof race, racism, and schooling. Research suggests that this lack of comfort in cross-culturaladvising relationships is reminiscent of the overall alienation that black students often perceivewithin majority white educational contexts (Harper & Patton, 2007). Consequently, it appearsthat something more profound than simply the transfer of academic information is at play in theadvising expectations of students of color.

It has been my observation over the course of nearly two decades as advisors of color workingin predominantly white educational settings that, when working with black students who desireadvising but have historically experienced educational disenfranchisement, dependence on mech-anistic and a narrowly prescribed definition of academic advising often occurs. This approach toadvising limits the role of the advisor to strictly curricular concerns and is detrimental to studentsof color (Harding, 2008). Instead, to establish trust and to develop a greater sense of comfort andbelonging, all students, but specifically students of color, typically need a more holistic approachto advising that links academic needs to the broader context of their lives (Castillo & Kalionzes,2008). The singular emphasis on curricular information and the latter more holistic approachto advising described above are respectively referred to as “prescriptive” and “developmental”academic advising models (Crookston, 1972; Grites & Gordon, 2000; Frost & Brown-Wheeler,2003). The academic advising literature also refers to a third approach, “intrusive advising”(Garing, 1993), which represents an intersection of developmental and prescriptive advising inwhich prescriptive strategies are used in the context of the developmental model. In addition,intrusive advising differs from the more traditional prescriptive and developmental models in thatadvisors proactively make the initial contact with students (Holmes, n.d).

A prescriptive approach of advising benefits institutions by allowing them to provide stan-dardized service to a large number of students in a regimented manner. This norm forces studentsto possess a basic skill set, interests, and expectations that conform to the prevailing institutionalculture. While the students may not necessarily find prescriptive advising stimulating, the pre-vailing conclusion is that students should at least get their basic academic needs met. Students ofcolor on the other hand, as a result of traditionally being on the margins of the dominant cultureof academia, find the normed, institutional practices represented by prescriptive approaches toadvising as further highlighting their marginal status (Gregory, 2000).

We are specifically interested in the explicitly outlined objectives that academic advisorsprovide to students and their relationship to the normative organization of the advising office.More specifically, we suggest that the official discourses and institutional practices supportingprescriptive forms of advising (that we found to be prevalent on the majority white publicuniversity campus that we are discussing) cause black students to shy away from the advising office

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(Mitchell & Rosiek, 2005). Even in instances where advisors of color seek to conduct advisingmore closely aligned with developmental or intrusive models, institutional practices associatedwith prescriptive models of student advising confound their efforts. Consequently, educators ofcolor, who share a similar sense of race-based alienation on PWI campuses, are perceived as theembodiment of the prevailing (white supremacist) institutional discourses stealthily packaged inbrown, red, or yellow flesh.

A discursively mediated understanding of the experiences of people of color, be they studentsor professionals, becomes paramount in these racially contested locations. A discursive analysisprovides a method for studying the actions and expectations of individuals as well as the impactof the policies and procedures of the institution in a more in-depth manner. In the next section, weanalyze how the organization of the student advising office underscores the relationship betweenrace and space in ways that re-inscribe narrow definitions of academic advising and are tied to thelarger context of the university that continues to exclude students of color. We apply Lefebvre’s(1991) concept of critical geography and Foucault’s (1977) discussion of the Panopticon to aspecific advising session between a black advisor and a black student and provide a means toanalyze this norming and subsequent racialization of space within the constraints of a prescriptiveapproach to advising.

CONTRADICTORY INSTITUTIONAL MESSAGES ABOUT ADVISING

In the context of the College of Arts and Sciences in the university that we are using as anillustration of a racialized space, two supervisors (both white) and six student advisors (oneblack and five white) are trained to address the academic and curricular needs of students. Theirapproach to advising takes little account of students’ individual interests; rather, it emphasizes aone-size-fits-all approach to student service. Given that the university has approximately 25,000students, and that each advisor is responsible for 900 to 1000 advisees, the expediency associatedwith a prescriptive approach to advising is obvious. However, this institutional focus on efficiencydirectly contradicts the numerous value-added and student-friendly initiatives that the universityin general and the advising office in particular explicitly advocate. Some of these initiativesinclude the development of advising cohorts, organized around professional interests and after-hour sessions with targeted groups like residential communities and Greek organizations. Initiallydesigned to bring advising to the places and spaces where students felt most comfortable, the aimof these approaches to advising is lost in actual articulation.

Amid these seemingly contradictory messages in which espoused institutional philosophies ofvaluing personal interactions persists, while simultaneously adhering to uniform efficiency drivenpractices, each academic department provides the advisors a standardized curriculum concern-ing prerequisites and course sequencing. This normed approach to academic planning affordsstudents’ limited leeway in the selection of classes or the possibility of pursuing other interests.Designed to get students through the advising office (and ultimately the university) as quickly aspossible, this application of a prescriptive model emphasizes mandatory advising sessions thatdiscourage deliberation and flexibility in thought. Further, the portions of the semester, such asthe pre-registration periods and the weeks at the beginning and end of each term, with higherstudent volumes represents an even more pronounced level of prescriptive/efficiency focusedadvising—evidenced by 15-minute time slots and scripted student-to-advisor interactions. The

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desire to move students through the advising process as quickly and as uniformly as possible isin direct contrast to the institution’s espoused aim of improving retention, academic success, andstudent satisfaction in general because all students do not have the same needs. Further, the factthat in many ways the institution and black students are both less than five decades removed fromsegregation suggests there may be issues that may not be fully addressed in a standardized manner.Further, while there is extant literature that suggests that students in general are disadvantaged bya prescriptive approach to student service (De Vries & Tisinger, 2003; Hendey, 1999), black stu-dents (approximately 9% of the student population at the institution we are describing) at PWIs,in particular, are placed at even greater academic peril in this climate because a rigid adherenceto a prescriptive approach to advising limits their ability to form academic relationships that havebeen shown to be vital to their retention and continuation in spaces with legacies of race-basedexclusion (Benton, 2001; Gilbert, 2003; Jones, Castellanos, & Cole, 2002).

UNDERSTANDING THE PRODUCTION OF A RACIALLY CODED SPACEIN AN ADVISING OFFICE

To set the stage for the narrative that we use to illustrate our point, we offer the context of theadvising office that closely mirrors Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon. Foucault (1977)described the power associated with the Panopticon as:

Space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements distributed. One musteliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals . . . Itsaim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals . . . to beable at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculateits qualities or merits. (p. 143)

The parallels between the advising office and Foucault’s (1977) discussion of the Panopticonare revealing. For example, the advising office features a sign-in desk in the center of the roomthat allows the receptionist to scrutinize students, to ensure compliance with time constraints, andto steer students to the academic advisor assigned to their major. Supervisors’ offices are locatedto the left as one enters the office, giving supervisors the ability to monitor the interactions thattake place in the reception area as well as interactions in cubicles that are visible around theroom. The cubicles are open and face the entrance, affording little space or privacy. As a result,an office with the explicit design to provide students with meaningful information to improvetheir experiences and learning subsequently becomes a heavily monitored area. Further, in thecase of black students, the pre-integration era decor of the office holds unwelcoming messages.Replete with images of all-white coeds lounging on the quad, the photographs can be read byblack students as a longing for and celebration of the “good ole days” for a school with a notoriousrecord of fighting racial integration. As a result of the institutional philosophies, physical design,and aesthetic choices, the space in the institution that both administrators and students consideras crucial for student success becomes contested ground.

Our raced and spaced illustration of academic advising depicts a black advisor’s experiencein a majority white university. This narrative, published previously (Mitchell & Rosiek, 2005),describes a counseling session between a male, black advisor and a male, black student. The storyillustrates how the advisor and student draw upon shared cultural knowledge to communicate

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academic information. This interaction emphasizes the importance of a developmental approachto advising. The story closes, however, with the abrupt intervention of a white, female supervisor,who appears to neither recognize nor respect the culturally informed developmental approachto advising taking place. Consequently, a confrontation between the student and the supervisorresults in the student leaving, feeling his needs were ignored and that his black advisor wasmarginalized.

The stark contrast between the student’s positive interaction with the black advisor and theconfrontational interaction between the student and the white supervisor dramatically highlightedwhat we term the perception of the advising office as a racially contested space. In the contextof this narrative and arguably the broader context of the university, attempts to implementdevelopmental approaches to advising are ultimately thwarted by the organization of space,institutional practices, and policies that often promote and support the type of behavior illustratedin the narrative.

The opening sections of the advisor’s narrative emphasizes time (from the student’s entranceto exit) in that the student’s and the advisor’s developmental advising relationship was closelymonitored and scrutinized throughout the advisement process:

The clock on my computer screen reads 4:40, promising the workday is almost over . . . I notice mysupervisor buzz into the lobby in full stride. She slows just long enough to make eye contact with awaiting student and then moves on. That means she wants to leave right at five. The clock reads 4:45. . . Over the next 10 minutes I hear my supervisor’s door open and close several times. Each time Ihear this, I compulsively look at the clock on my computer face . . . My supervisor suddenly re-entersmy cubicle—its 5:10 p.m. She says to the student “just come on in my office, and I’ll get you finishedup.” The student sighs and in a low voice replies “That’s ok.” My supervisor insists as she leansover my desk and reviews the student’s files with brow drawn. Head nodding slowly, she announcesimpatiently, “You’re not in our college, so we can’t help you.” The student is now visibly perturbedand in a combative tone replies, “Well, I’ll change.” The supervisor fires back “Either way it’s late,and we can’t get the paper work done until tomorrow so you’ll still need to come back tomorrow.”(Mitchell & Rosiek, 2005, pp. 87–91)

Not only does this excerpt reflect lack of professionalism on the part of the administrator italso shows that the institutional discourses that value system-wide efficiency over students’ needsoften contrast culturally to the needs of students of color. Therefore the individual actions ofthe advisor and administrator are simply manifestations of broader university-wide discourses.These efficiency-minded nondescript approaches to student service clearly represent a prescriptivemodel of advising. A prescriptive approach to advising places time at a premium and regardlessof students’ needs, they must fit the 8:00 a.m.to 5:00 p.m. business hours of the university. Theimplicitly hurried interaction the student had with the advisor and explicitly abrasive interactionhe had with the chief administrator of the office reflect institutional sensibilities informed bydiscourses that cause time and structure to take precedence over students’ actual needs or interests.

Foucault’s (1977) discussion of surveillance and categorization is important for understandingthese practices as well. Notice that regardless of the student’s espoused needs or admission status,once recognized that he was not already enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences, he wasautomatically streamlined into a whole set of rigid institutional policies that took precedenceover the proposed university-wide concern for student service. So, in the case of a black studententering a historically white space such as the one described in the narrative, the complex

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workings of multiple discourses—such as race and a distinct history of exclusion in concert witha prescriptive model of advising—function to constrain, support, and ultimately shape the “chillyclimate” (Jones, 2001, p. 12) that Mitchell and Rosiek (2005) described. The result of thesepolicies was that the student needed to leave at that moment and the likelihood that he wouldreturn was lessened. Further, if he did choose to return it would likely be in an understandablydefensive manner.

Next, there was the issue of the student arriving in the office without a clear vision of hisacademic goals or career aspirations. The outlined aims of the office suggest that the advisorsare professionally trained to help students address these very issues. This particular student hadrecently transferred from a small liberal arts college to the large flagship university of the state.For new and transfer students, information concerning the full range of student services is crucial(Heisserer & Parette, 2002). The better an advisor is at understanding a student’s backgroundand listening critically while still acting flexibly, the better she or he will be at determiningwhich services (academic and co-curricular) will be most beneficial (Grites & Gordon, 2000).Students in these circumstances are in dire need of the holistic approach to advising associatedwith the developmental model. An extremely important, yet rarely addressed, aspect of helpinga first-year, transfer, historically disenfranchised student fit into his or her new institution isdiscursively informed knowledge of what the institution represents to the student’s indigenouscommunity. In instances like the example above, what may appear simply to be a case ofensuring that a student is in the right office to get the proper advising information or a caseof closing the office in order to follow university protocol can be read in many different ways.For instance, when working with black students who attend institutions like the one that weare discussing, with a documented history of segregationist policies, students of color are oftenuntrusting of the institution (Wane, Shahjahan, & Wagner, 2004). Therefore, to historicallymarginalized communities, the interactions between the black student and the white universityrepresentative may be read as further indication of the university indifferently using policies tocontinue functioning as a white-only space.

This legacy of race based discrimination is not lost on students of color (Feagin, Vera, &Imani, 1996; Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pederson, & Allen, 1998; Perna et al., 2006; Smith,Altbach, & Lomotey, 2002). Consequently, as CRT suggests, students like the one discussedin the example, transferring from a local historically black college to the flagship universityof the state, provide particular challenges to the prescriptive approaches to advising that wescrutinize in this article. These challenges are situated in collective memories of discriminationand the resulting communal discourses about the university’s history of racially based exclusion.To simply suggest that because the institution no longer legally discriminates against people ofcolor that the legacy of discrimination has either ended or been forgotten is naıve at best and ismore likely educationally irresponsible. The case can be made that despite that the admissionspolicies may have been changed, the problems still reside in the actual inner-workings of theschool that were established in an era where (racial, cultural, gender, class, sexual, religious, etc.)oppression/discrimination was the norm.

However, within these moments of uncertainty and subsequent scrutinization of the university,a discursive analysis of institutional practices affords extremely valuable insights. Foucault (1977)wrote, “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposesit, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (p. 101). Accordingly, we advocate thateducators take proactive steps toward recognizing and subsequently rooting out institutional

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norms that lead to the continued perception of schools (like the one under study) as white-onlyspaces. We acknowledge that the advising office may not have necessarily intended to sendracially exclusive messages to black students and that they may have responded to a white studentin a similar manner. However, informed with knowledge of the discourses about what the legacyof the institution’s segregationist past meant/means to their black students, there are a full range ofmore educationally responsible practices available (some of which we discuss in the Conclusion).

Even 40 years after integration, familiarity with the legacy and collective discourses aboutthe struggle to end segregation are crucial for educators providing service to black students inmajority white contexts. Lacking knowledge of the prevalence of these discourses, educators willstick to a standardized approach to service for all students that ignores the unique needs of blackstudents who continue to struggle against the legacy of Jim Crow. Those on the margins of theinstitution bring understandings and critical perceptions about the institution that cannot helpbut inform the ways that they attempt to navigate, and ultimately experience, the institution (DuBois, 1903; Hill Collins, 1986). Responsible advisors are challenged to use these perceptions asa means to provide critical services to black students—services that are closely aligned with theprimary tenets of developmental advising informed by discursive understandings that issues ofrace/racism are an unfortunate and pervasive part of the legacy American higher education.

For example, upon entering the office, the student in the narrative was immediately aware of thedifferences in institutional culture between the historically black institution that he transferredfrom and the historically white institution he currently attended. Therefore, he immediatelyperceived that he was in a different space. The problem was not that the institutions weredifferent, but that his perception of this difference was primarily structured along racial lines. Theblack advisor in the narrative described this awareness by commenting as follows:

I entered the lobby and greet the student with a firm grip, and then an embrace typical of the waythat young African American men greet one another. While this is not a rehearsed or uncommonreception, the close read and darting gazes from others in the lobby mark the gesture as different.The student glances around the lobby reading the room as I introduce myself. He follows me intomy cramped cubicle and takes a seat. I see him take notice of my office furnishings, which includesan African American history month poster, a calendar featuring the photographs of famous AfricanAmerican women, and a banner from a chapter of my historically Black fraternity. This is a markedcontrast to the decorations in the lobby he just left, which featured nostalgic photographs of life at theuniversity in the early 20th century, before African Americans were admitted. (Mitchell & Rosiek,2005, p. 89)

In these remarks by the lone black academic advisor in the office, the black student thathe is advising acknowledged an African American friendly oasis of sorts in a space that waseither explicitly marked as a memorial to an era before desegregation or simply did not take inconsideration what this choice of antebellum decor may mean to black students. In either case,from his initial welcome to the office to the moment that he entered the cubicle, the layout of theoffice, his greeting, subsequent reception, and eventual stormy exit re-enforced the perception ofthe office as unwelcoming to black students. Although this may not have been the intent of theadvising staff, adhering to a prescriptive standardized approach to advising establishes a myopiathat obscures the unique needs of black students. In effect, even when the institution attemptsto reach out to black students, the legacy of racially based exclusion is so deeply embedded in

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the metaphorical DNA of the university that decision makers have no sense of how to functiondifferently.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Broadly stated, this article suggests that higher education institutions need to change so thatthey value and support culturally diverse discourses. Addressing these issues requires morethan simply increasing the number of advisors of color; rather educators must possess criticalunderstanding of race and space in the history of schooling in the US. We believe this type ofservice lends credence to developmental approaches to advising in that advisors are challenged tobecome students of their advisees’ communities—familiarizing themselves with their students’communal insights, understandings, and cultural artifacts. Moreover, we support hiring educatorson epistemic grounds, suggesting that they possess understandings about and familiarity witheducationally useful discourses that are unique to marginalized communities. Further, educatorswho possess these types of understandings enhance an institution’s ability to conduct the self-critique that we believe is essential to ridding colleges of the discursive underpinnings that causethem to function as racialized spaces.

The epistemic nature of this recommendation means that it is not the physical identifiers ofrace that provide the groundings for these valuable understandings. We are not suggesting forinstance, that only black advisors should advise black students. Instead, we believe that it is anunderstanding of the discourses that black students depend upon to make sense of and to navigatethe institution that is of utmost importance. Hence, regardless of an educator’s race, just as aprofessor has a learned academic knowledge base (that they were not born with), so too shouldeducational institutions look for potential employees who possess (through an experiential baseor through study) familiarity with the ways black students encounter schooling in majority whitecontexts. Although in some ways this seems like common sense, the process of developing thetypes of relationships that lend themselves to culturally responsive educational service is in directcontradiction to the efficiency minded models that have historically impacted everything fromthe academic policies and institutional practices to the actual physical plant of the campus thatwe have described.

Returning to the physical and symbolic structuring of the advising office, educators mustrecognize the ways in which we conceptualize space as well as the spatial practices that support thisconceptualization. These racialized spaces carry meaning in both physical and conceptual locationand are socially produced and constructed through contested patterns of use (Low, 1996). Inaddition, these spatial politics of institutional spaces form physical, social, and psychological websof archi-textures (Lefebvre, 1991) that highlight tensions in these spaces as sites of impositionand resistance on the part of the dominant and marginalized communities. If one is unclear aboutthese struggles over space and race all that is needed is a consideration of several 1950s era electedofficials across the US South, from Arkansas to Alabama or Mississippi to Virginia, who stoodat the doors of elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools and proclaimed Blacks wouldnever be admitted. The University of Alabama, for instance, is still hamstrung by then-GovernorGeorge Wallace’s infamous statement, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow and segregationforever!” (Alabama Department of Archives & History, 2002). Contrastingly, the countervailinglegacy of Blacks who stood stridently opposed to these segregationists’ aims represents a vivid

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illustration of the contested nature of race and space that Lefebve forwards. And, in these struggles,even after the events have passed, the history that is written on the spaces is negotiated as well, andwe argue that educators who wish to establish more equitable environments must be intentionalin the ways that they conceptualize these locations. These spaces and the events that make themcontested terrain, when thoughtfully considered, provide valuable opportunities to memorializethe occasions, choose to name buildings, create artworks, and establish organizations and studentsupport services that reflect a more inclusive space. Consequently, higher education research isbroadened by further inquiry concerning how spatial structures influence agency, experience,utilization, allocation, and re-appropriation of space by black students and educators.

An integral part of this work consists of institutions aggressively framing counter-narrativesthat offer multiple ways of historicizing the production of space. For example, institutions canreconsider choices in room architecture, which is of particular need for southern universitieslike the one discussed in the narrative with antebellum roots that may represent memorials to aninstitution’s segregationist past. For example, The University of Mississippi’s (UM) decision tocreate a memorial in 2006 to commemorate the turbulent events concerning the enrollment of itsfirst black student, James Meredith, signals an instance of an institution that has a well-documentedsegregationist past that has attempted to create architecture that celebrates the inclusion of AfricanAmericans. The installation of four 4-by-8-foot panel murals that depict an ever-increasingclimate of diversity spanning from UM’s founding in 1848 to the present are an example of waysinstitutions with a segregationist past can physically represent their attempts at creating a moreracially and culturally diverse campus.

At another level, the presence of student advising in an academic building prescribes the natureof the advising and offers several constraints. First and foremost, by locating student advisingin the student services or the student center building where students regularly frequent (studentunions, cultural centers, and recreation centers), more informal advising might be possible wherestudents check in more continuously with their advisors. Second, administrators need to recognizethe importance of developmental advising and the ways in which student advising practices areimplicated in the production of particular spaces that are welcoming to black students. This mayimply offering a broader range of counseling formats, times, and spaces. Joint advising sessionswith several students, meetings with campus groups, and advising outreach to different parts ofthe campus may encourage a broader range of topics and conversations. These conversationsshould include negotiating campus life and selecting professors that adhere to more culturallyrelevant pedagogies (Kirk-Kuwaye & Libarios, 2003).

Finally, taking account of these recommendations has systemic implications for colleges.In particular, our recommendations call for campus-wide proactive development of culturallyinclusive institutional policies. The limited scope of this article located our inquiry specificallyin the context of an academic advising office, but in our future work we will look closely atways that the educative process can be enhanced by a similar discursive analysis of race andspace in college classrooms. Subsequently, through this future endeavor we seek to expand ouranalysis to include teaching—a primary wing of the hallowed teaching, research, and servicemission of higher education. Through this research specifically on curriculum, pedagogy, andcollege teaching, we will explore the ways that different academic disciplines/majors, functionin a manner that impacts the educational experiences of black students. Despite that our currentconceptualization of this topic is purely anecdotal, black students tend to be clustered in a narrowrange of academic majors, leading us to theorize that neither black students nor PWIs have fully

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come to terms with the impact of prior centuries of racially exclusive policies on the educationaloutcomes of historically marginalized communities.

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Roland W. Mitchell is an assistant professor in the Educational Theory, Policy and PracticeDepartment and the Higher Education Administration Program Leader at Louisiana State Uni-versity. His primary research interests include the impact of historical and communal knowledgeon pedagogy, an exploration of the understandings that allow educators to provide service tostudents from marginalized cultural, ethnic and social backgrounds, and the theorization of racialidentity as it relates to collegiate experiences.

Gerald K. Wood is an assistant professor of Social Foundations at Northern Arizona Uni-versity. His research interests include qualitative research, critical pedagogy, and critical geogra-phies including mapping the intersections of race, curriculum, language, ethnicity, and othermarginalizations.

Noelle Witherspoon is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership in the Departmentof Educational Theory, Policy and Practice at Louisiana State University. Her research agendaincludes analyses how various belief systems emerge and impact the (re)interpretation of policyand practice in schools, education for social justice and advocacy, ethics of education, and genderand race in education.

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