Image credit: Beck Seamons
Belonging has always been a deeply insufficient way to express an extraordinary idea: for most humans, well-being isn’t solely a matter of survival. We have within us a yearning to be accepted, to be loved, to be noticed, to matter (Strayhorn). I find this drive towards belonging lovely, if not sacred. The word belonging, in comparison, has been so overused in contemporary media and literature that it has taken on a cheesy, superficial pallor. On BYU campus, I have heard a community of belonging described in terms similar to the final scene of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, when every Who in Whoville joins hands and sings around the Christmas tree. This is fiction. A community of belonging is not a community where everyone knows and loves each other. College campuses are big, especially BYU. The simple truth is that students will graduate without meeting, much less making friends with, the majority of the campus community.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offers a more apt description of belonging in his use of the term “beloved community.”
Beloved community happens when people of diverse racial, ethnic, educational, class, gender, abilities, sexual orientation backgrounds/identities come together in an interdependent relationship of love, mutual respect, and care that seeks to realize justice within the community and in the broader world. (Boundless Love Project)
Dr. King’s concept of a beloved community is one that rejects assimilation to a fixed norm, focussing instead on the power of diverse communities to enrich their members. Being a beloved community is different from being emotionally connected to every student on campus. Rather, it posits that the well-being of the campus community is dependent on each distinct individual, regardless of background. Even while the student body organically divides into various groups, every student feels that their campus is designed for people who look, think, and act like them. This is not holding hands around the Christmas tree. This is going into the career office and feeling confident that they know how to advise someone with your particular background. This is attending class and feeling that you have something to offer. This is going to university events that seemed to have someone like you in mind when they were created.
I’d like to identify two significant problems that result from our misunderstanding of what belonging really means.
First: if we are fixed on the dreamy ideal that belonging is a “kumbaya” sort of affair, it becomes impossible to operationalize the concept into practical policies that facilitate it. In the context of higher education, academic literature has repeatedly shown that a sense of belonging can anchor students in their college experience, leading to higher degree attainment, improved academic outcomes, and heightened sense of well-being.
This is particularly true for demographic minorities on college campuses. Research indicates that experiencing a substantive sense of inclusion can mitigate the multifaceted barriers to degree attainment for demographic groups such as low-income, BIPOC, and first-generation college students (Pedler et al., 2022). Universities lose face and money every year on minority students who discontinue their degree. As such, encouraging a sense of belonging is not only an ethical imperative for university administration, but a financial one as well. However, in my experience, converting these findings into policy inevitably leads to finger-pointing from the level of administration down to the student-body. No one seems to know who should take responsibility for facilitating community. Like a sociological game of hot potato, administration, faculty, and students all exclaim in tandem: “Not I!” And so, another year goes by and I continue to interview students who feel that BYU just isn’t meant for people like them.
On paper, Brigham Young University has the components to exemplify community-building. Yes, it is an unusually homogenous campus. However, its Christian mission could mitigate its dramatic lack of diversity and make BYU a pinnacle of belonging among other elite universities. Indeed, this is the objective of the Office of Belonging, which was established in 2022. The Office of Belonging was created partly in response to the report released in 2021 by the BYU Committee on Race, Equity, and Belonging (CoREB). The inaugural CoREB report summarized the findings from over 500 responses via online submissions, various stakeholder meetings, and numerous individual email messages, revealing that BIPOC students at BYU feel the “sting of racism,” a lack of safety, and racial discrimination on campus. The Office of Belonging’s stated purpose is to “assist BYU in constructing a community of belonging… to teach the world how to use gospel principles to create unified communities.”
But we are now more than two years removed from the center’s opening, and I have seen little evidence in my research that the office has made an impact on the belonging experience of my interviewees. In addition to being called racial slurs by BYU students, my research participants of color frequently reported instances in which their presence at BYU was questioned by their peers. Many have been asked what BYU sports team they are on. Others had been told that they were only accepted into BYU because of affirmative action. Statements such as these communicate to minority students that BYU isn’t meant for people like them unless under atypical circumstances. Many students would argue that the Office of Belonging has yet to complete even its first goal of establishing a campus community of belonging, much less its ambition to make BYU an example to the world.
From an outside perspective, I see an office that remains closely informed about belonging initiatives on campus, but has yet to break a sweat when it comes to actively fulfilling their own goals. It’s a shame, because I don’t think the goals put forward by the Office of Belonging are unreasonable. On a campus steeped in the rhetoric of Christlike behavior, there should be less prejudice, less exclusion, and less division. And yet, we seem to be dead in the water. I wonder what would change if we abandoned the whimsical, holding-hands-around-the-Christmas-tree version of belonging, in favor of something more operationalizable. Perhaps if we viewed belonging in terms of mattering, of safety, of support, and of significance, we would have the tangibility necessary to scrutinize structures and processes that are preventing students on campus from feeling emotionally and psychologically safe.
The second issue that stems from misunderstanding the meaning of belonging is that we allow false conceptions of community to take root in the campus setting, the most common of which is the notion that community requires assimilation. In almost all of our communities, we set a standard of normalization that divides us into distinctive categories: those whose natural characteristics and attributes meet the normalized standard, those who assimilate to meet the standard, those who refuse to meet the standard, and those who attempt to meet the standard but can’t (Hechter & Opp). Stereotypes and standardizations are a natural, organic function of social sorting. They are also the bane of community-building in diverse groups such as a college campus like BYU.
I have conducted over sixty interviews with BYU students since 2021, the majority of whom were low-income, first-generation, or BIPOC. In my analysis of this qualitative research, I find that students from all demographics frequently use the “BYU stereotype” as a reference point for their sense of inclusion on campus. Their descriptions of this stereotype are caricature-esque: a heterosexual white man with a good hairline who plays the piano, served an LDS mission, loves his wife, and radiates pure intellect and self-confidence. This stereotype has permeated into rhetoric both inside and outside of campus. It is an ideal at which everyone scoffs but which everyone nonetheless uses as a yardstick for their own sense of inclusion. As such, all participants—regardless of background—can recall a time in which they felt excluded at BYU. For those in the majority, these moments stem from a sense of deviation from the BYU stereotype. Political affiliation, grades, relationship status, religious affiliation—these were common reasons that majority students felt that they were excluded. But these moments were only that—a passing feeling of discomfort in the university setting.
The BYU stereotype is a legitimate inconvenience for majority students. It is a social phenomenon that bends their will towards conforming to the perceived norm. But majority students fall into the category of those who could, potentially, conform to the normalized standard at BYU. Then there are minority students, whose very characteristics act as barriers to ever assimilating to the stereotype. It is impossible for BIPOC students to conform to the stereotype that all BYU students are white. Likewise, LGBTQ+ students cannot conform to the stereotype that all BYU students are straight. In interviews, minority students recount painful, poignant memories that showcase their moments of disenchantment from the hope of belonging at BYU. Few are angry. Most are just disappointed. Resolved to their place on the margins of the BYU community, many minority students find their own safe spaces in friend groups, clubs, and employment.
College campuses need the diverse perspectives and backgrounds of students from minority demographics. Just as agricultural monoculture leaves crops vulnerable to disease and soil degradation, homogeneous campus climates are perhaps easier to sustain, yet result in long term negative consequences. I won’t trivialize community by saying that it all comes down to interpersonal relationships. Like so many things, belonging functions on a macro and micro scale. The BYU administration must do more to put tangible processes behind their rhetoric of belonging. A good first step: make belonging more concrete by considering the areas, programs, classes, and processes that tell minority students that BYU is not meant for people like them. This may be large-scale, like the high financial burden of ROC (student athletic event) passes, or small-scale, like racially homogenous imaging on departmental websites. The BYU administration should seek perspectives and feedback from individuals in minority groups and learn from external programs and individuals that are already advocating for the success of these students. Most importantly, BYU officials must feel a sense of responsibility for improving the campus community that is based in optimism and grounded in stringent evaluation.
I would also emphasize that the micro scale does exist. Regardless of the structural architecture through which belonging functions at the university level, we cannot ignore the individual responsibility we share. My biggest piece of advice for those struggling to improve their capacity to build community? Get curious. Genuine curiosity can combat the anxiety that comes from interracial or intercultural interactions. Pose questions to the people around you about their motivations for receiving a college degree, their passions, their ambitions, their goals. Curiosity communicates investment, an essential aspect in helping someone feel like they matter.
Next, get curious about the stereotypes living in your head. If you are subconsciously measuring your own belonging against a stereotype, question its source, its value, and its accuracy. Question the boundaries you have placed around your own community. Who do you instinctively think belongs there? Who doesn’t? Where did those boundaries come from? Try to expand the boundaries of the community to which you subscribe.
We humans are, for the most part, very adept at organic community building. Our communities develop from socialized instincts to interact with people like us: people who share our interests, our backgrounds, even our complexions. When faced with creating diverse communities, however, many of us flounder. It is not that we are bad at community-building. We do it all the time. It’s that we have been raised in societies that don’t teach us how to build diverse communities. Rather, we are raised to believe that assimilation goes hand-in-hand with social acceptance. Striving for belonging requires us to challenge this instinct on a structural and personal level. We have a long way to go, but I’m strangely optimistic.
References
Strayhorn, T. L. (2018). College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge.
Hechter, M., & Opp, K. D. (Eds.). (2001). Social norms
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I absolutely love this article!! The focus on acheivable belonging is so important. I am optimistic for what ideas like the ones expressed in this article could do to promote a more positive environment on the BYU campus. Thanks for sharing Josie!!
This thoughtful article mourns for the students who find themselves on the margins while somehow brimming with hope for a future in which all students can feel comfortable. If only every BYU student could read and truly understand what is written here.