The impact which organizational decline in higher education has on African American students and institutional management of organizational decline can influence the access and success of African American students on predominantly White campuses. With higher education fighting for continued existence as a result of enrollment reductions and a shrinking economy, and the growing disparity between African Americans and White Americans, the press for survival prevails for both institutions and cultures. This study examined the effects which institutional decline in public higher education has upon African American students. Specifically, the study focused on how educational administrators and African American students in four Massachusetts institutions of higher learning described and explained the extent of the decline and their perceptions of its short-term and long-term effects. Various approaches and strategies utilized during decline and how they promoted or impeded an institution's ability to support goals and action related to participation of African American students were explored in the study. Attention was given to the different perceptions surrounding these issues in order to present a holistic and in-depth understanding of the dimensions of decline as it impacts African American students. Focus group interviews were used to explore and identify the complexity of these issues. The findings of the study indicate that the perceptions of both students and educational administrators were that African American students had been affected by the impact of organizational decline in terms of reduction and elimination of programs and services which are used and needed by this student population to access higher education as well as to survive in college environments which are hostile and unfriendly. The exploratory nature of this study, through the perceptions and reflections of African American students and educational administrators responsible to and for this population, should deepen the understanding within the academy regarding access and success of African American students during an era of decline.

In the Cayman Islands, one is raised to be the managers of someone else’s financial empire; the empire of the United Kingdom to be precise. Historically, whenever there are whispers about political independence among the population, they are abruptly quieted by a chorus of familiar rhetoric that attributes the success of business and tourism industries on island to its administrative financial connection to the United Kingdom. In a colony where most people rarely think of themselves as colonized, to the majority of Caymanians there is nothing improper about this relationship, it is simply the way things have been. On the few occasions where there is sustained conversation on the topic of political independence, like clockwork, the dialogue often takes a decidedly anti-Jamaican and anti-black tone that positions the so-called socioeconomic “struggles” of Jamaica as a cautionary tale on the perils of political independence. Perils that are then juxtaposed with the so-called socioeconomic success of Cayman which are framed as the prosperity of political dependency. It is this enduring conversation that warrants further interrogation; how and why African descended persons are actively choosing to not be self-determining. Much of the current literature interrogates the colonial presence in the Caribbean in a historical context. However, my interest is in how modern-day manifestations of colonialism (economic, cultural) impacted understandings of agency and freedom? Moreover, Caribbean scholarly discourses on colonialism tend to situate it in the past, instead a present, ongoing reality in the region today. This project centers Caymanians and their understanding of their own humanity outside of what they provide to others. My work seeks to disrupt the concept of ‘Paradise’ in the Caribbean; a concept evoked in order to provide leisure for tourists (mostly originating from North America and Western Europe) and make the financial management of the wealth of the ruling elite from the same places as those tourists desirable. This research interrogates a humanity that is agentic, self-conscious, and decolonial. / African American Studies

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Aunts are constantly perceived as extended family members designated to support the nuclear family according to western familial traditions. Previous research has consistently relied on said traditions for studying Aunts within different cultures. Consequently, this hegemonic ethnography has not only hindered the ability of Aunts to be examined through other cultural perspectives, but it actively reinforces their role as universal, assuming everyone adheres to western family structures. This study will utilize data from TikTok in identifying and examining the social role of Black Aunts in the African American community through Afrocentricity and Africana Womanism. Contrary to the initial research, Black aunts’ responsibilities stem from West African traditions. My findings will indicate that Black aunts serve multiple roles within their communities necessary for survival, entertainment, cultural memory, and aid / Africology and African American Studies

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