EVERYTHING IS RACISM: Physical design of universities alienates marginalized students.

The design aesthetics of American institutions of higher education often make students from lower-socioeconomic and racially minoritized backgrounds feel like outsiders on their own campuses, claimed a group of scholars in a recent article published in the Educational Psychology Review.

“Many institutions of higher education were created by and for wealthy White men, to educate ‘young men of good hope’ for careers in law, medicine, and other high-status professions,” the scholars wrote.

“Today, intentionally or not, American institutions of higher education continue to serve the interests of wealthy White people and they have done little to dismantle socioeconomic and racial inequity.”

Together, they argued, these feelings of being an outsider are downstream of the “exclusionary function” of public spaces like parks and libraries on college campuses.

American universities are designed as “defensible spaces” that “undermine inclusion and perpetuate inequities” through territoriality, surveillance, and symbolism, the scholars noted.

The professionally neurotic have to earn those grant dollars somehow.