Abstract:

This study involves interviews of approximately six African-American students attending a southern Appalachian University which shall be given the pseudonym Mountain University. Subjects were all between 18 and 24 years of age and came from a variety of academic disciplines. All come from cities which are much larger than the town bordering Mountain University (approximately 2,000 persons). The nearest large city is 100 kilometers (66 miles) away. Only 25 African-American students inhabit this campus of approximately 1200 mostly Caucasian students. The interviews conducted indicate that the students had excellent academic records and enjoyed their classes. They expressed themselves as feeling little of the effects of racism typical of the South of a few decades ago. This finding is in direct contradiction to many previous studies. These students uniformly found themselves bored on the campus. On the weekends, most of the other students left campus for their homes nearby, but many African-American students could not leave, partially because they, by and large, did not own automobiles and partially because their homes were often several hundred miles away. Thus, they had little choice but to stay on the campus. They generally found themselves isolated and unable to make many new friendships. One of the six interviewees plans to leave the university because of this isolation. Another theme that ran through the interviews was one of adjustment: adjustment to the white student culture, to the routines embedded into a small rural university, and to their need for entertainment and friendship, particularly on weekends. Adjustment to the academic life on campus was rarely found to be a problem. Student responses to an African-American interviewer were found to be substantially the same as those given to the White interviewer .

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