Student Voices

This page is designed to uplift the voices of students who have experienced racism in the classroom and on campus. We have invited current and former BIPOC students to share their experiences of marginalization in their own words, without editing or censoring their stories. The goal of this page is to let the stories stand on their own by creating a collage of experiences as told by marginalized students in their own voices, in their own ways. Too often, BIPOC and students with intersectional identities experience trauma that is silenced, and through this page we hope to create a counter-space for students to use their voice to change the narrative about classrooms and campus spaces.

For BIPOC students and marginalized students who have been made to feel small, invisible, or inferior we see you and your voice and being is welcome here. This space is for you, to process your experiences so you don't have to hold this trauma by yourself. Your bravery to speak your truth and share you stories pave a way for the next generation of students who will encounter racism in the classroom and on campus. 

For educators and non-BIPOC folks who have joined us on this journey of anti-racism, it is not enough to read the books on the syllabus page and learn about the key concepts. We hope you read and listen to these stories and come to understand that racism is felt and lived everyday by students. No anti-racist reading list or glossary of anti-racist vocabulary can eradicate racism in the classroom like building consciousness and prioritizing the safety of the marginalized. Hopefully these stories illuminate the urgent need for change, because one student is one student too many, and racism has no place on campus or in the classroom. 

​Truth to power, 
The Anti-Racist Teaching Collective

"I have had countless experiences of racism in the classroom and around campus. From white students in my class referring to their fellow students of color as “colored people,” to teachers making uncomfortable comments about my hair, to professors speaking on issues such as environmental racism without feeling comfortable enough to name that these are issues being faced by Black students. I have often had to step in to correct harmful and racist rhetoric because many professors refuse to get involved or don’t see why it is important to. When I speak up in these instances, it truly triggers my fight or flight, my heart starts pounding, palms get sweaty, and I am left feeling uneasy for the rest of the day. This is why we need our professors to be trained in anti-racism so that we can feel safe and welcomed in the classroom; something I have only ever felt fully in the Ethnic Studies Department. It's disheartening, and experiences like this weigh down on you. They make you feel as though you don’t belong in the university. My presence here is not validated when professors allow students to “play the devil’s advocate” in order to belittle other students’ life experiences."

Rose, Current Santa Clara University Student

"I took a class where the professor created a hostile environment because they chose to acknowledge racism as centered around white experiences. The course material was for white students to reflect on their whiteness. I was the only black student in the class and was forced to sit through a lesson where the professor projected some racist ads including blackface while the entire class laughed. The professor expressed confusion as to why everyone was laughing but no disciplinary actions or comments were made. I stopped attending the lectures after that because I felt that my time and presence wasn’t respected."

"I remember a pervasive feeling of having to prove myself and my intelligence in every class and conversation. I remember looks of surprise from professors and classmates because after I had spoken in class because they had already made assumptions about me the moment I stepped into the classroom. As a tutor at the HUB I noticed that people would go to my white coworkers for help before me even when I greeted them and sat closest. Most of the time when people did come looking for me specifically it was because their paper was about slavery or racism."

"I’ve learned that many professors want to find a way to talk about racism in the classroom and are ignorant about how to and depend on students of color to bail them out. I have had professors turn to me —the only black student in 95% of my classes— to share my experience, I guess thinking that I could speak for everyone. When I was expected to carry discussions of racism it felt that I was being made the professor instead of getting the education that I paid for."

Alexis, Santa Clara University Alum

“I have had a few micro (and macro) aggressive experiences in classroom settings and around campus. Most of which come from students. Most notably, I, along with a group of Black womxn were yelled at from a dorm room window and called “watermelon eating monkeys” on an anonymous app. This, of course, shook me to my core, as it was my first experience of direct overt racism and I was a freshman at the time. This experience changed the way I felt on campus and the way I positioned myself among my fellow classmates. I felt simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible. No one should have to experience this kind of feeling on a campus where their safety and well-being is supposedly prioritized.”

Rhyann, Santa Clara University Alum

"the earliest [experience of racism] I have at SCU is literally the first night that school started back up, I finished my lab and went over to a girl I met at orientation's dormroom (she was Black) and a group of us got ready to go out to whatever frat party was happening at the time.
On the way there, a group of frat boys standing on the sidewalk watched us go by and yelled after us 'go back to Africa!' suffice to say the vibe was definitely killed and even though we tried to brush it off, it was a really disturbing thing to experience literally the first day we were at SCU. 

"pretty early on, like during orientation and first-year activities, I would justify why people excluded me/stared at me/didn't attempt to get to know me to them just not liking me for whatever reason, which only made me feel like shit bc like what had I even done to be unlikeable by them? I was literally just existing. and later I came to the realization that no SHIT, the reason they don't like you is because you're brown!!! there was no other possible explanation.

I would make a lot of excuses for racists just to make myself feel better about the emotions I was going through and things I'd experienced but at some point I realized I was making excuses for people being racist to me when I would NEVER allow a racist to be excused if they were being bigoted to someone else."

Aside from that, here's some other shit I've experienced:
​- being in religion classes (core) w Islamophobes
- getting into an argument w a Nazi in [Professor's] Religion 2 class
- having people look at me weird bc i'm not white-passing, which even if i was, my name definitely isn't
- being excluded from groups of white people even if the professor told us to partner up w the people around us
- white [people] having staring problems
- being looked at especially weirdly when I wore necklaces that represented my MENA heritage
- being called a "sand n-word"
- feeling unsafe, angry, and unvalued after TPUSA was approved

"I'm fuckin T I R E D. and angry and numb and resentful and at the same time, not numb or tired at all. I’m angry that I not only let people treat me like that, but I made excuses for them. I'm angry that i was made to feel like I didn't belong in a space bc of who I was or who they thought I was. I'm angry that shit was assumed about me and people were so comfortable being so openly racist. I'm angry that I didn't give them hell earlier."

 A​nonymous, Santa Clara University alum