Queering College Student Retention

Abstract

Retention literature and concepts warrant examination through the lens of queer theory, a poststructural body of thought about sexuality and gender, to understand their implications for queer students. Five themes found in the retention literature are addressed from a queer perspective: framing retention as an economic and labor problem; campus climate; the focus on programs, policies, and services; psychological traits; and positivistic approaches. Queering retention involves deconstructing retention binaries; problematizing the production of normative subjects through retention theory; focusing on institutional transformation; and examining retention as heteronormative domination. Queer failure and futurity are offered as possible new frames for retention. This essay seeks to raise questions, tensions, and complexities with no clear or simple solutions. Tentative and limited implications for practice and research are offered; however, they raise more questions than provide answers.

Keywords

queer theory retention LGBT students

The difficulty of thinking queer theory together with retention theory arises from their different ontological and epistemological foundations. Most retention research encompasses “a range of models, some sociological, some psychological, and others economic in nature … [along with a] focus on ‘what works’” (Tinto, 2006–2007, pp. 4–5). Retention research seeks to predict or understand student success and departure, which are positivist and interpretivist paradigms (Lather, 2006). Queer theory emerged from a deconstructive paradigm (Lather, 2006). These paradigms ask different questions: positivist and interpretivist research ask what we can know or understand while deconstructivist research questions what constitutes truth and knowledge (Lather, 2006). Given the differing understandings of knowledge production, queering college student retention poses significant challenges. Nonetheless, I attempt to (re-)think retention through the lens of queer theory.

Those looking to this essay for high-impact practices (HIPs), ways to better include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students, or solutions for reforming higher education will walk away disappointed. Instead, I offer questions about the construction of retention in scholarship and practice. I also critique how U.S. higher education reconstructs and reifies oppressive social conditions for students whose sexual identities, sexual practices, and genders do not conform to dominant norms and ideals. What follows then is a philosophical essay that interrogates concepts, assumptions, and framings found in the retention literature through the lens of queer theory. I also offer possible yet limited implications for higher education institutions and research, likely raising more questions than I answer. Largely, easily implementable solutions remain elusive because queering retention would involve a radical restructuring of higher education. As such, I hypothesize and ruminate about what queering retention would involve. I hope my thoughts might be useful for researchers and others who produce knowledge about retention, practitioners who work with students, and institutions who need to help queer students succeed, even as I problematize the concept of success.

Key to queering retention is understanding queerness. I use queer students capaciously. Queer students include students who identify along contemporary identity categories (e.g., gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, transgender, trans, gender nonconforming [GNC], agender). I also mean students whose sexual and gender acts, identities, fantasies, work/labor, and behaviors are on the margins of heteronormative society (Rubin, 2011; Warner, 1999). In addition, I refer to students who reject homonormative (Duggan, 2002) values and practices and students whose sexuality and gender defy binaries (Sedgwick, 1990/2008). Not all who fit under my use of queer may identify as—or be identified by others as—queer. These could include straight-identified or presumed straight students who engage in sex work, for example. Such students could include students who identify primarily with anthropomorphic animals (i.e., furries) rather than with conventional gender or sexual categories. Queer students may reject any kind of gender or sexual identity label. Queerness does not stop, however, with gender and sexual categories. Queer students hold multiple identities and experiences beyond sexuality and gender. For example, they may be of any racial or ethnic identity, may be of any socioeconomic status, may have disabilities or live with chronic illness, and may participate in any or no religious faith or spiritual practices. Queering retention starts with the understanding for whom we queer our institutions, scholarship, and practices.

Next, I situate myself within higher education. Then, I introduce readers to concepts in queer theory. Following, I discuss key ideas around student success and retention theory using queer theory. I end by speculating about the possibilities and impossibilities of queered retention. This essay, like queer theory and queerness, may be “messy.” However, my intention is “about saying yes to the messiness, to that which interrupts and exceeds versus tidy categories” (Lather, 2006, p. 48).

The Failure of Not Failing

Poststructuralism, the paradigm informing queer theory, recognizes the self as a construct of interlacing cultural and institutional forces, making the location of a “self” questionable at best and difficult at least (Namaste, 1996). Thus, a poststructural perspective makes discussing the self in a reflexivity statement difficult (Pillow, 2003). For critical researchers, “reflexivity becomes important to demonstrate one’s awareness of the research problematics … [and] raises questions about the politics of how we go about the doing of our research” (Pillow, 2003, p. 179). However, this practice relies on modernist conceptions of a knowable self; poststructuralism views the self “as multiple, as unknowable, as shifting” (Pillow, 2003, p. 180). Still, I am engaging in what Pillow (2003) calls “uncomfortable reflexivity” (p. 188) because I find ethical importance in disclosing how, as a faculty member in a university and as an experienced student affairs educator, I participate in the construction of the discourse(s) I critique.

Most of my career in student affairs focused on helping first-year students living on campus persist to the second year and to support their academic success (e.g., improve or maintain their grade point average). I helped to construct and maintain living learning communities for first- and second-year students. I worked with faculty, associate provosts, and other student affairs educators in campus-wide efforts to improve first-year student retention. I now train student affairs educators to promote student success in their chosen areas. My research addresses the injustices and exclusions gay, trans, and HIV-positive students face in higher education. Related to my topic, but less relevant to know: I identify as gay or queer.

As a queer university faculty member and a dedicated student affairs educator, I have perpetuated, and partly continue to perpetuate, the discourses and practices I seek to challenge and change in how universities and student affairs educators conceptualize and implement their work. Also, in almost every respect I benefit from the limited forms of inclusion now available to White gay men in the United States. Although assimilationist and homonormative (Duggan, 2002) politics repel me, I nonetheless lead a life that participates in (while absorbing the negative impacts of) capitalism and the corporate university (Magolda, 2016). My participation matters because Halberstam (2011) asserted that one queer resistance strategy is the refusal to labor for corporate and university profit. Like any queer faculty, staff, or student, I have the option to fail—at least in capitalistic terms—through non-participation (Halberstam, 2011).

My refusal to fail—my continued participation in university life—speaks to the privileges I enjoy that many queer students do not. My continued labor also speaks to my belief that reforms must come from within and without institutions. Although I see queer failure as a legitimate strategy, I also believe that one less queer voice inside the ivory tower leaves power in place and offers no dissent to hetero- and homonormative business as usual. Still, the academy seeks to absorb and assimilate dissenting voices. Halperin (2003) observed well over a decade ago, “Indeed, queer theory has been so successful in its dash to academic institutionalization that it has left tread marks all over earlier avatars of postmodern theory … queer theory was simply too lucrative to give up” (pp. 340–341).

Halperin’s insights about the absorption of the supposedly radical body of theory into the academy inform my thinking about my employment and queering retention. My life and career are only sometimes transgressive. I mostly transgress when I intrude upon the silence and erasure of queerness in discussions of university business or scholarship. Otherwise, like queer theory, I tend to “be folded back into the standard practice of [the university] … without impeding academic business as usual” (Halperin, 2003, p. 341). In this essay, I hope to transgress by “preserving the critical, or queer, dimensions” of queer theory in thinking about retention (Halperin, 2003, p. 343). Preserving those dimensions means to make my theorizing specifically about lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans and gender non-conforming (GNC), polyamorous, kinky, sex workers, and other students marginalized in higher education for their sexuality, gender, HIV status, and sexual practices. Preservation also entails questioning and pushing conventional conceptualizations of retention and student success.

In this pushing, I may transgress by examining possibilities that seem to suggest that universities abandon their commitment to supporting or including queer students. I explicitly reject any such interpretation. Universities should do everything possible to remove barriers for queer students trying to complete their academic degrees. Higher education should fully commit to enrolling, retaining, and promoting the success of queer students—and to help them find affirming employment upon graduation. These, however, are the minimal efforts universities should make. I seek to envision in this essay a reimagined environment of higher education that exceeds tentative measures of inclusion.

Queer Theory

Simply stated, queer theory is the poststructural critique of sex, sexuality, gender, and identity theories (Wiegman, 2012). Poststructuralism interrogates ideas of human agency and understands identity as constituted through sociopolitical forces (Namaste, 1996). The concepts and critiques often subsumed under the umbrella of queer theory emerged from literary, activist, and academic lines of thought as a form of cultural analysis and critique by and for queer people (Berlant & Warner, 1995). Queer theory differs from mainstream gay and lesbian politics and discourse, emphasizing difference from heterosexuals (and cisgender people) “except for what we do in bed” (Halperin, 2012, p. 60). Rather than seeking inclusion into heterosexual institutions and ways of life, queer theory dismantles institutions (Conrad, 2014). When I use the term queer theory, I follow the lead of Hames-García (2011) who includes queer of color critique—such as Quare and Jotería studies that emphasize constructions of race alongside sexuality and gender. I also include poststructural gender (e.g., feminist and trans) theories, crip studies (i.e., the intersection of disability/ability and queerness), among others.

Deconstruction of Binaries

Producing an exhaustive list of the concepts and ideas found among queer theorists is not feasible. Among the concepts I utilize in this essay include a challenge to binaries. In her foundational queer studies work, Sedgwick (1990/2008) challenged the hetero/homosexual binary. She revealed how the construction of heterosexuality was entirely dependent on the existence and simultaneous suppression of homosexuality. Sedgwick further argued that the hetero/homobinary informs many other societal binaries “knowledge/ignorance, private/public, masculine/feminine, majority/minority, innocence/initiation, natural/artificial, new/old … active/passive” (p. 11). Those other binaries can include retention/persistence, success/failure, belonging/alienation, or retention/loss also. Later in the essay I explore the problems with these binaries in retention work.

Challenging Normativity

Related closely to the deconstruction of binaries, the next concept important to queering retention theory is a questioning of dominant normative ideals and values. U.S. culture and institutions still privilege certain forms of sex, sexuality, desires, genders, gender expressions, and forms of identification (Rubin, 2011). These privileged forms tend to center binary genders, heterosexuals, and limited types of relationships built around cisgender heterosexuality. This privileging, called heteronormativity, imagines heterosexual relationships and norms as the underpinning of all forms of sociality (Warner, 1999). For example, heteronormativity presumes a masculine man and a feminine woman in a monogamous, nonkinky procreative marriage as the ideal for society (Rubin, 2011). Designating who is a man and a woman happens through a line of thinking that links certain chromosomes with certain genital characteristics with a certain gender and gender expression. For example, men are presumed to have XY chromosomes, a penis and testes, and be masculine. Butler (1900/2006) coined this cultural logic the matrix of intelligibility. Those whose lives fall outside this matrix often face many obstacles.

Students still face oppression, marginalization, and stigmatization for asserting their queerness outside the boundaries of heteronormativity. To be clear, some, perhaps many, queer people desire to assimilate into heteronormative society (Ward, 2015). The welcome capitulation to the norms of the heterosexual, capitalist nation-state is homonormativity (Duggan, 2002). However, “even those who might wish for complete homonormative assimilation … often find themselves unable or unwilling to achieve gender normativity or to conform to heteronormative dictates for appropriate sexuality” (Ward, 2015, p. 36). In terms of retention theory and practice, those wishing to retain students must ask what kind of institutional environment they seek to retain queer students in. If campus heteronormative culture remains intact, queer students may depart or struggle because they do not see their desires, relationships, or sex and gender practices valued and supported. For example, what are the ethical implications of supporting GNC students academically but not tending to the gender binary structure of the institution (Johnson, 2017; Nicolazzo, 2016)? What kind of climate does campus housing, which assists with first-year retention (Shudde, 2011), offer queer students? A somewhat different, but not unrelated concern, is how institutions respond to and produce queer subjects.

The Institutionalizing of Queerness

Another queer concept relevant to retention practice and scholarship is the role of institutions in policing, regulating, and categorizing queer students. Foucault (1990), one of the most influential thinkers on queer theory, frequently focused on how our institutions produce the subjects and issues they seek to address. Using Foucault, I understand institutional policies and practices designed to address retention as a strategy “to regulate behavior and render populations productive via a ‘biopolitics’ that entails … intervention in and regulation of the everyday life of [students] in a ‘liberal’ enough manner to minimize resistance and maximize wealth stimulation” (Lather, 2004, p. 282).

Addressing higher education’s treatment of gay and lesbian students specifically, Ferguson (2012) asserted that in the history of “hegemonic affirmation” of race, nationality and gender, the university’s turn to sexuality is merely “power’s latest mode” (p. 209). Similar to Halperin’s (2003) concern about the assimilation of queer theory, Ferguson (2012) saw the institutionalizing of sexuality in higher education as a “commodification of difference as part of an emergent global capital to incorporate differences of race, disability, sexuality, and gender as objects of knowledge” (p. 213). In other words, Ferguson maintained that the establishment of race, gender, and sexuality studies—and greater inclusion of students with subordinated identities—provided universities the ability to appear and claim they addressed institutional inequality without actually addressing systemic and cultural oppression. Thus, when students raise concerns, university administrators position problems as individual issues rather than institutional ones. Ahmed (2012) identified a similar practice in higher education she called “non-performatives” (p. 117). Nonperformatives are seeming institutional commitments to address inequity and injustice that never result in substantial action or change. Queering retention then involves a radical transformation rather than moves to institutionalize queer identities.

Specifically, Ferguson’s (2012) and Ahmed’s (2012) ideas should challenge institutions to ask if they truly seek to retain all queer students—or just certain ones (e.g., White gays and lesbians, trans students who identify within the gender binary, HIV-negative students)? In my own research, I found that the pervasive institutional silence about HIV/AIDS made gay college men living with HIV feel uncertain about whether they could or should share their status with faculty and university staff (Denton, 2014). Through a lack of discourse about HIV, these universities constructed HIV-positive people as others outside the university—not students. Universities cannot retain students not framed as being in them. What other queer students do retention efforts exclude? Also, how are queer students identified, conceptualized, and impacted in retention and student success policy and research (Rankin, Garvey, & Duran, 2019)?

Queer Futurity

Given these challenges, then, what kind of possibilities does queer theory offer in rethinking college student retention and success? Given the large body of thought contained under the rubric of queer theory, debate proliferates about how to envision a queer future and what constitutes queer ethics. Queer scholarship frequently frames this dialogue as queer futurity and antisocial (or queer negativity) strategies. Muñoz (2009) believed the collective and historically communal nature of queers could usher in a future that imagines a project rejecting the dehumanizing, corporatized society that now exists in the United States. Queers have a long history of imagining hopeful change during difficult days of oppression. For example, Muñoz (2009) pointed to how gay men facing genocidal indifference during the height of the AIDS crisis “managed to maintain our queer sex, our spaces and, to some lesser degree, the incredible sense of possibility” (pp. 33–34). Another example included the Magic Touch, a New York bar where queers of all races formed relationships while engaging in sex work (Muñoz, 2009).

Possible queer strategies are not all about hope or looking to the future, however. Antisocial thesis proponents argue that queerness attains ethical value by rejecting a future that promises happiness and fulfillment (Edelman, 2004). This vision of queerness acknowledges that happiness will always remain elusive and failure remains part of the equation. Queer negativity rejects the notion of progress and maintains that negative feelings will likely persist for queers in heteronormative society (Halberstam, 2011). However, those negative feelings “contain the potentiality for new modes of collectivity” (Muñoz, 2009, pp. 176–177). Queer failure is not giving up but rather refusing to participate in “a market economy [that] must have winners and losers … [failure is] a tale of anticapitalist, queer struggle” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 88). Queer futurity and queer negativity are both “about doing ‘something else,’ … in relation to a something that is missing in straight time’s always already flawed temporality” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 154). To state this differently, both social and antisocial visions of queer futurity reject things as they currently are and look to opt out of them and refashion them. Rethinking retention through queer futurity could mean abandoning the current framing of retention as hopeful or beneficial for queer students. Queer futurity asks in what ways does retention promote the interests of the corporate institution at the cost of queer students. What opportunities are available for queer students to craft the futures, spaces, and communities they want rather than what higher education administrators and researchers seek to impose on them? Are those of us who work in higher education willing and able to share or hand over power to queer students to retain them?

Multiple Constructions of Oppression

Finally, a large body of queer theory (e.g., queer of color critique) foregrounds the ways institutions coconstruct sexuality and gender in oppressive ways with race, ability, and other identities. For example, Dunning (2009) and Somerville (2000) explored how fears about racial and sexual purity intertwined in U.S. history. Dunning (2009) further connected fears of miscegenation and homosexuality with fears of disability. McRuer (2006) argued that capitalistic demands for labor and production require suppressing disability and nonheterosexuality. Cohen (2005) asserted that justice for queers means addressing racial and economic injustice for multiple populations. Thus, although much retention scholarship focuses on singular identity categories, queering retention means that the complexity of identities needs incorporation into those efforts. For example, Black gay men’s experiences are different from those of straight Black men and White gay men. A trans student with no illness experiences campus different than a cisgender lesbian living with lupus. Queering retention means complicating practice and scholarship.

Queer Theory in Review

The concepts I introduced here are only a few ideas from the expanse of queer thought that may be useful in deconstructing college student retention. The challenge to binaries demonstrates how retention discourse situates persistence as attributes of students rather than a construct of retention discourse. The challenge to norms illustrates how normative categories in retention research and practice erase certain queer students. Related to this, institutions make small concessions to include limited expressions of queerness (i.e., institutionalizes them) to avoid addressing structural and cultural oppression. Competing concepts of queer futurity interrogate to what extent current retention discourses and practices benefit queer students. And, finally, queer theory informs the need to focus on more than single identities or single forms of oppression in retention. Next, I provide a brief overview of retention and student success theory before applying these queer concepts to that theory.

Retention and Student Success Theory

Retention theory encompasses many different concepts and models (Aljohani, 2016). Although scholars disagree on how to classify retention theory, “psychological and sociological perspectives seem to be the umbrella categories under which most student retention models fall” in addition to some organizational and economic models (Aljohani, 2016, p. 3). Despite different approaches, most retention theories and models have in common an expansion, critique, or connection to Tinto’s work (Morrison & Silverman, 2012). Tinto (2006–2007) traced the progression of modern student retention research and theory as starting with his model of social integration. Because Tinto’s work attains “near paradigmatic stature” (Braxton, 1999, p. 93), I frequently connect his work to the following five recurring themes I observed in the retention literature. These are not the only themes present in retention scholarship, but they are themes I explore through queer theory.

Framing Retention as an Economic and Labor Problem

Echoing Tinto (2006–2007), Jenicke, Holmes, and Pisani (2013–2014) stated, “student persistence or retention is big business … Once an entering student decides to leave a particular university, the opportunity cost of the now unfilled slot trickles through the university community” (pp. 193–194). Xu and Webber (2018) commented, “loss of students prior to completion is especially hard as institutions invest scarce resources to recruit and admit students. Institutional leaders and faculty members alike seek … to help increase human capital and build a strong workforce” (p. 3). As part of several reasons why college retention matters, Seidman (2012) claimed,

We should care about student completion of academic and personal goals for many reasons, including student development and financial issues (those of both the college and student) … We also want those who follow us to contribute to society. Nowadays it is difficult for individuals without college degrees to acquire wealth and happiness or to prepare for the world of work. (p. 8)

Braxton et al. (2014) similarly noted:

additional markers of college student success include such domains as … occupational attainment, … personal accomplishments (e.g., work on the college newspaper, election to student office) … In addition … student departure negatively affects the stability of institutional enrollments, institutional budgets, and public perception of institutional quality (Braxton, Hirschy, & McClendon, 2004). (p. 2)

Change, Sharkness, Hurtado, and Newman (2014) warned, “the productivity and strength of the U.S. economy will face a serious decline if no significant action is taken to address the racial disparities in the attainment of post-secondary degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields” (p. 555). To clarify, these are not the only or even the primary terms our outcomes in which these scholars framed retention. What these statements reflect, however, is a significant framing of retention and student success. Whitten, James, and Roberts (2017) mentioned the “undergoing increased scrutiny from funding agencies [and] accrediting bodies” to have students complete their degrees quickly (p. 2). Given the financial stakes involved, retention models and practices emerging from organizational or business perspectives is unsurprising (e.g., Ackerman & Schibrowsky, 2007–2008; Berger, 2001–2002; Jenicke et al., 2013–2014). Unfortunately, business-oriented paradigms or economic incentives have not led to universities improving their retention efforts (Tinto, 2006–2007, 2012).

Campus Climate

Despite critiques of the empirical validity of campus climate—especially racial campus climate—being a detriment to student persistence (Lascher & Offenstein, 2012–2013), campus climate remains a long-standing recurring topic in the retention literature. Dey and Hurtado (1995) argued for an ecological understanding of how students and campus environments interact and impact each other. Since then, research on campus climate proliferated (e.g., Hurtado, Griffin, Arellano, & Cuellar, 2008), identifying ways in which racial discrimination impacts students with subordinated racial identities (Harper & Hurtado, 2007). Harper and Hurtado (2007) advised, “As long as administrators espouse commitments to diversity and multiculturalism without engaging in examinations of campus climates, racial/ethnic minorities will continue to feel dissatisfied … and certain institutions will sustain longstanding reputations for being racially toxic environments” (p. 20). Hurtado et al. (2008) advocated for campuses to use continual climate assessments and empirical data to guide practice and policy.

Focus on Programs, Policies, and Services

Another frequent and recurring theme is a focus on programs, services, classes, and other small-scale interventions to retention. Braxton and McClendon (2001–2002) provided 20 recommendations ranging from advising to rewarding faculty to student affairs programming. High-impact practices, effective efforts to promote student success, are a popular focus (Provencher & Kassel, 2019). Typical programs studied include college access programs (e.g., Means & Pyne, 2016), first-year seminars (e.g., Reid, Reynolds, & Perkins-Auman, 2014–2015), mentoring (e.g., Chang et al., 2014; Xu & Webber, 2018), and financial support programs (e.g., Millea, Wills, Elder, & Molina, 2018). Some scholarship does include social groups and organizations as an aspect of student persistence (e.g., Hallett, 2013). Although retention scholars frequently advocate for institutional change on a large scale, much of the literature focuses on supportive interventions that do not alter or disrupt the university status quo.

Psychological Traits

A great deal of retention theory and literature focuses on personality traits, mind-set, psychological dispositions, and other attributes specific to students. A few examples include satisfaction (Schreiner & Nelson, 2013–2014), sense of belonging (Hausmann, Schofield, & Woods, 2007; Thomas, Wolters, Horn, & Kennedy, 2013–2014), feeling motivated and encouraged (Simmons, 2019), romantic relationships (Schmidt & Lockwood, 2017), family and significant others (Nora, 2001–2002), academic mind-set (Han, Farruggia, & Moss, 2017), commitment (Braxton, 1999), and self-efficacy (Baier, Markman, & Pernice-Duca, 2016; Thomas et al., 2013–2014). Most of the scholarship on these traits do reference the interaction the institutional environment plays on some of these personal dispositions but still maintains focus on the psychological makeup of students. Tinto (2017) demonstrated such a focus when he asserted, “students, however, do not seek to be retained. They seek to persist … the student’s interest is to complete a degree often without regard to the institution in which it is earned” (p. 254). He further linked persistence to motivation, which he “understood as the outcome of the interaction among student goals, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perceived worth or relevance of the curriculum” (Tinto, 2017, p. 255). Perhaps most notably, despite noting initiatives institutions need to undertake to retain students, Tinto (2012) emphasized students’ role in retention:

Of course individuals matter … some individuals succeed by sheer willpower, skill, and perseverance … Others do not succeed even when placed in settings conducive to success. There is only so much an institution can do—and some would argue should do—to promote student success if individuals are themselves not inclined to invest in those activities that lead to success. (p. 8)

No matter how much retention theory discusses the role of the institution, individual students and their personal attributes remain in sharp focus.

Positivistic Approaches

Retention scholarship and literature are overwhelmingly quantitative in nature. Quantitative methods are not inherently positivistic or postpositivistic but historically are (Garvey, Hart, Metcalfe, & Fellabaum-Toston, 2019), and frequently researchers still utilize them to make claims about correlations that present as truths and facts. Stage (2007) explained, “A positivistic researcher seeks models that nearly completely explain phenomena of interest, aiming for confirmation and verification to explain universal human behavior. But … the outcomes tend to replicate the status quo and verify meritocratic fairness” (p. 10). Garvey et al. (2019) “argue[d] that higher education survey instruments are systems of knowledge (Renn, 2010) with great influence and importance that require closer examination” (p. 2). Almost all the quantitative work I surveyed showed little evidence of a critical quantitative approach. Quantitative criticalists seek to ameliorate oppression and ask questions about models, measures, and methods (Garvey et al., 2019; Stage, 2007). Although an especially egregious example, the dangers of relying on positivistic research find expression in the work of Jenicke et al. (2013–2014). Describing their method for addressing retention, they state:

Six Sigma is heavily data driven in pursuit of organizational repair of defects detected. The organizational “defect” in question is a student dropout. While the term “defect” is impersonally employed in this article to describe a student dropout, we do not seek to be offensive in its usage, but rather systematic in solving the problem at hand. Our “defects” are at-risk students and real people, persons that deserve our full problem-solving abilities in order to reap the rewards (both individual and societal) of higher education. (Jenicke et al., 2013–2014, p. 194)

Despite their disclaimer, they nonetheless dehumanize students through their language. Although the little literature frames students in this way, positivistic research also effectively dehumanizes students through uncritical consideration of them as variables in an equation to be solved. In a less oppressive example, (Tinto, 2013–2014) compared retaining students to physics: “gaining and maintaining momentum is key to student completion” (p. 1). Language invoking an atomic reaction implies a formulaic, easily provable positivistic perspective. Given the relative dearth of retention research on queer collegians (with the exception of Sanlo, 2004) and the numerous issues Garvey et al. (2019) and Garvey (2019) found with how national higher education surveys operationalize sexual and gender identity, using quantitative methods and taking positivistic stances on retention seem extremely problematic.

Queering Retention and Student Success

In this section, I take up the previously identified themes in the retention literature through the lens of queer theory to pose questions and challenges. My goal is to hypothesize what might be unattainable—at least in the short term—conditions and possibilities. I seek to highlight how retention theory and practice positions queer students and offer questions, some alternatives, and few solutions.

Retention Binary Problems

Sedgwick (1990/2008) argued that the heterosexual/homosexual binary became “a presiding master term,” affecting many cultural binaries (p. 11). I assert retention/persistence is another such binary. Sedgwick asserted that the construction of heterosexuality not only depended on the existence of homosexuality but also denying it. Homosexuality needed denying because it poses a threat to the stability of heterosexual identity (Sedgwick, 1990/2008). Until the publication of this issue, retention theory existed while leaving queerness mostly unacknowledged, ignored, and relegated to the “closet.” Largely until now, retention research and practice privileged heterosexual and cisgender students through erasure of queerness. Conceptually, the retention literature frames the binary of retention (what institutions do) and persistence (what students do) as related yet separate actions. However, just as heterosexuality does not exist without homosexuality, retention does not exist without persistence. In other words, although some retention theory discusses student–institution interaction, persistence implies a fully autonomous subject outside the discourse (systems, policies, and practices) of universities (Butler, 1900/2006; Foucault, 1990). While the retention literature acknowledges that environment can impact persistence, mostly persistence exists as personal attributes students either have or do not have to various degrees. From a queer theoretical perspective, although students have agency, universities nonetheless construct “persistence,” not the individual. Therefore, although some scholars place the onus on universities to change their culture to retain students (e.g., Braxton et al., 2014; Tinto, 2012), framing persistence as something students do provides avenues for colleges to abdicate that responsibility for radical transformation. And, as Braxton et al. (2014) and Tinto (2012) indicated, higher education continues to fail to enact significant reforms.

Retention Theory Produces Normative Subjects

Acceptance into higher education can be a form of validation for students, but universities are disciplining bodies where the interest is to create docile subjects who do not challenge the status quo (Foucault, 1977). Similar to how Halperin (2003) and Ferguson (2012) discussed the normalizing effects of the academy on queer theory and marginalized students, retention efforts are normalizing: they attempt to have students conform to university culture rather than allowing full expressions of queerness. Thus, retention/persistence are not merely interactive constructs but rather produce each other in an ongoing, recursive power relation (Foucault, 1990). Being retained as a student is to be made a subject of knowledge by the university. The university invokes its various apparatuses to determine what kinds of interventions are necessary to retain the student, even when the instruments are flawed (Garvey, 2019; Garvey et al., 2019). Positivistic approaches seek to construct the student-subject needing retention yet use inadequate categories that fail to account for many queer identifications. Positivistic research and practice then recognize only queer students whose identities align with normative categories (Butler, 1900/2006). Practice informed by positivism may then ignore or erase many queer students.

The discourse of retention as an economic and labor problem is another form of normalization. Although retention efforts have associated economic costs, casting retention in these terms positions students as valuable only insofar as they contribute to both the university’s and the national economy’s bottom line. McRuer (2006) identified the concept of compulsory able-bodiedness: the demand that citizens be fully capable of serving corporate labor needs. Compulsory able-bodiedness involves both suppressing disability and any nonreproductive sexuality (McRuer, 2006). Framing student retention as an economic issue further erases queer students by demanding their queerness (including any queerness about their bodies or abilities) not interfere with the profit to be made from their retention and degree completion.

The financial and business focus of retention illustrates how retention functions less as a way to promote student success and more as a way to serve the interests of those who already have economic stability and resources, a group that excludes many queer youth (Human Rights Campaign, 2018). Persistence then exists as a relationship between the administrative universities seeking to manage queer resistance in partnership with an industry that functions to profit off disparities in student success with no financial return to economically disadvantaged queer youth. Not all queer students, especially those with advantaged other identities, will see the need or will want to resist the normative order. Some queers can indeed assimilate comfortably and welcome doing so; they embrace homonormativity (Duggan, 2002). Retention practices may be homonormative when those interventions focus on queer people deemed “respectable” because they consume and produce docility. Just as these kinds of retention efforts serve to benefit a few students while leaving fundamental injustices unaddressed, homonormative queers enjoy personal advantages while leaving larger oppressive systems unaddressed (Conrad, 2014). Therefore, not all queer students will respond positively to more radical strategies.

Focus on Small Inclusions Rather Than Institutional Transformation

A focus on programs, policies, and climate speak to the limited willingness to engage in systemic or institutional change. Queering college student retention goes beyond the politics of inclusion that permeates contemporary political and educational discourse. Britzman (1998) observed that queering education did not simply mean “construct[ing] normalcy” (p. 85). She elaborated, “the problem is something different than a plea for inclusion, or merely the addition of ‘marginalized voices’” (p. 86). To state this within the realm of college student retention, the act of including queer students reifies the normative order by marking them as others who must be retained—or perhaps are being retained. None of this is to say that queer students should not be retained, demand improved retention efforts, or that institutions should not endeavor to retain them. By including certain types of queer students into the university, universities extend a promise of stability (and retention) on “the condition that one breaks ties with all those who cannot make it—the non-white and the nonmonogamous, the poor and the gender deviant, the fat, the disabled, the unemployed, the infected, and a host of unmentionable others” (Love, as cited in Ferguson, 2012, p. 219). Retention must support a wide range of queer students, not just those institutions find desirable for their own interests.

Classrooms are a neglected but important aspect of retention (Tinto, 2012). Mere inclusion in curriculum of queer identities and topics remains insufficient (Kumashiro, 2002). Queering instruction upends pedagogical and curricular (hetero-)norms, refashioning oppressive methods and materials of teaching (Kumashiro, 2002). Using queer/queer race pedagogies, faculty and other educators can (re-)conceptualize how relationships, knowledge production, normalization, pleasure, and desire manifest in learning environments (Luhmann, 1998; Misawa, 2010; Shlasko, 2005).

Queering retention involves a substantial rethinking of power relations on campus: the promotion of the gender binary, heterosexual norms, and how institutions act upon categories that frame modern formations of sexuality and gender identification. Queering retention means not subjecting queer students doing live cam shows in their residence hall to rounds of questioning by administrators and threats of sanctions for violating business policy. Queering retention means providing queer students—and all other students—ample financial resources so that, for example, the choice to engage in sex work is an avocational, not necessary, choice.

Retention as Heteronormative Domination

Persistence, a psychological construct, can easily fit into the pathologizing and normalizing history of psychology and queer people (Halperin, 2007). Institutions get to partially absolve themselves for the cultural conditions that inhibit queer students from flourishing in college by attributing part of the problem to personal flaws or failures. Morrison and Silverman (2012) noted that “Tinto (1987) recommended that colleges focus their attention primarily on those forms of departure that are understood by both the college and the student as educational failure” (p. 77). As heteronormative culture goes unmarked, the forces inhibiting queer success go unmarked as well. Just as gender nonconformity still often is—and homosexuality was—labeled a psychological illness (Halperin, 2007), so heteronormative university environments deflect their failures on the psychological limits of queer students. Queering retention means understanding the oppressive history of psychology with queers and finding other ways of conceptualizing queer students’ motivation to stay in college. One alternative could be considering the emotional habitus created for queer students on a given campus (Gould, 2009). This concept focuses on the social conditions of the campus and what feelings they create for queer students. Given especially that queer- and trans-spectrum students experience a great amount of stress and anxiety on their campuses, shifting focus to what causes those feelings seems warranted (Rankin et al., 2019).

Queer Failing or Queer Future for Retention

Tinto (2017) characterized persistence as continuing momentum toward the goal of completion. Retention and persistence, co-constructing each other, are essentially about the future, progress, and achievement: “heteronormative common sense leads to the equation of success with advancement, capital accumulation … and hope” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 89). What then if universities chose to reject heteronormative capitalistic logic and chose queer failure? A queerly failing university would reject the goal of education as producing students who are better laborers for the workforce and instead embrace egalitarian and communal outcomes for students. Queer failure in retention could even include a return to some ideas already found in retention theory, like critical thinking (Seidman, 2012) that could serve queers better. Queer failure could mean an abandonment of competitive academic environments and grades in favor of collaborative learning environments. Queer failure could mean universities choosing to prioritize initiatives that supported eliminating oppressive policies and environments over initiatives the merely seek to push students to degree completion within a set amount of time.

Queer failure could mean no longer framing degree completion as an object of hope. Embracing Berlant’s (2011) notion of cruel optimism, the state of suffering for the thing you want most, institutions can create dialogue around what degree attainment means. Seeking a degree creates stress, sacrifice, and, at times, suffering for a certification that offers possible upward social mobility; but what pain awaits queer people with college degrees who must still face racism, ableism, cissexism, and heteronormative society? Is the pain of persistence (e.g., debt, microaggressions, harassment, erasure) worth persisting, especially for queers who do not want to replicate the homonormative order (Duggan, 2002)? Universities could work to reduce the cruel optimism of persisting by equipping queer students with critical thinking capacities that will help them navigate postdegree life.

An example of this is found in a participatory action research initiative called The No Outsiders Project (DePalma & Atkinson, 2009). In this endeavor, educators and researchers attempted to instill deconstructive skills about sexuality and gender in children and young people using queer theory to inform curriculum and pedagogy (DePalma & Atkinson, 2009). Difficult, complicated, and conducted with constant dialogue, this project demonstrated that rethinking normative educational practices using queer theory is possible.

The collaborative spaces queers created collectively offer other possible options from the queer futurity thesis (Muñoz, 2009). Although limited mechanisms for student input currently exist, rarely is administrative power shared with students. Even rarer is power shared with queer students. When university administrators cannot conceptualize what retention for all queer students looks like, or when they cannot conceptualize what transformation of the institution looks like, they can invite queer students to the table. Beyond merely asking queer students their opinions, universities could hand over retention assessment and decisions to queer students. Garvey et al. (2019) discussed the complexities of understanding how queer students experience campuses. Further steps would involve discarding traditional evaluation items and methods and work with queer students to guide institutional assessment followed with actual change.

Finally, queering retention means considering how colleges impact students entering college and the world into which they graduate. Marine (2017) made recommendations for queering college access for trans collegians that institutions could expand upon for various queer students. In addition, while enrolled universities can equip queer students with skills to navigate heteronormative, capitalistic, and increasingly corporate U.S. society. For graduates and alumni, institutions should consider leveraging their political and social influence to change inequitable labor conditions for queer people and reject further neoliberal corporatization of the work force.

Lather’s (2004) description of how to queer science can guide efforts here: use “a tentative authorial voice, constructing a strange relationality of knowing by not-knowing in a way that does not reinscribe itself as a new one-best-way to knowing” (p. 288). In other words, those working in retention can reinvent the practice and scholarship of retention through continued complicating the terms, categories, policies, and programs of retention and refusing to act with certainty. Ongoing dialogue, assessment, and refinement of retention policy and practice alongside queer students must be standard practice to queer retention and the university.

Conclusion

Queering retention and persistence involve a striking departure from the normative ways of conceptualizing student success. Queering retention involves—but goes far beyond—creating safe spaces, programming, offering classes, inclusion in the curriculum, or academic advisement. Queering retention involves economic and racial justice on campus, shifting cultural norms and values away from hetero- and homonormative ideals, involvement with public education, creating changes in business culture and society, and providing students the ability to self-identify and self-determine across the university. Queering retention may mean learning to live with uncertainty, contradiction, and a recognition of the fluid self that cannot be fully captured by surveys, policies, or programs. Queering retention rejects the current positivistic, capitalistic formulations of retention to envision institutions dedicated to the recognition and advancement of the full humanity of all queers on campus.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author would like to give special appreciation to Jay Garvey for the invitation to this special issue, his vision, and generous time and feedback on this manuscript and also to Kent Brintnall for his feedback on an early draft.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

J. Michael Denton

Author Biography

J. Michael Denton is an assistant professor in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program at the University of South Florida. His research interests include poststructural and critical perspectives on college student embodiment and students living with chronic illnesses. He does research for and about gay college men living with HIV/AIDS and transgender collegians.

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