Why Are Identity-Based Student Organizations So Hard to Sustain on Today’s Campuses?

Cory is a senior and the president of an identity-based student organization. At his institution, he is adamant that things are “rough”, watching what used to be a lively community hub lose momentum. Event turnout is dismal, institutional communication is glacially slow, and, most tellingly, members are reluctant to step into leadership. “It's too much emotional labor,” he said, “and students no longer get a sense of belonging out of here.” His case is not unusual in 2026. Across American higher education, many of the student organizations that once helped students find community, purpose, and staying power are running on fumes.

Let us be honest: college is a relentless series of existential questions, and for many students, the most urgent is not what to major in but where they belong. Identity-based student organizations, whether a Black Athletes Union, a Latinx in STEM society, an APIDA student alliance, a Queer Rugby Club, or another affinity-based community, are often the institutions within the institution that answer that question first. They are where students build community, practice leadership, make sense of who they are in relation to others, and learn to navigate conflict, care, culture, and purpose on campuses that can otherwise feel impressively designed and emotionally cold. In an anti-DEI era marked by sharper scrutiny, fewer resources, symbolic support, and very real burnout, these groups are being asked to hold more and survive on less. And so, we must ask the uncomfortable question: what exactly are we asking them to carry? If these organizations matter as much as colleges say they do, why are they so hard to sustain?

Why Identity-based Student Organizations Matter So Much

Identity-based student organizations shape the part of college life that students often remember most: the human, relational, and developmental side. Student involvement has long been linked to student learning and development (Astin, 1984), and a sense of belonging is widely understood as central to student success, persistence, and well-being in college (Strayhorn, 2019). Student development theorists such as Chickering and Reisser (1993) describe college as a period during which students develop competence, greater autonomy, mature relationships, identity, and purpose. Phinney’s (1989) model of ethnic identity development similarly emphasizes exploration and commitment as students clarify what their ethnic and cultural identities mean to them. Identity-based organizations thus give students a place to carry out that work with others while building community, practicing leadership, and testing who they want to become.

Ethnic and identity-based student organizations can also foster belonging, cultural familiarity, and student adjustment, especially for those navigating marginalized positions on campus that may otherwise feel distant (Museus, 2008). They also give students real opportunities to practice leadership, collaborate with peers, and shape campus life beyond the classroom (Komives et al., 2019). They can further contribute to campus inclusion and diversity efforts by creating space for students to build community and participate in institutional life in meaningful ways (Kuk & Banning, 2010; Sasso et al., 2023). If higher education is serious about belonging, leadership, and student development, it must stop treating identity-based student organizations as a byproduct of fun and start recognizing them as part of the institution’s educational infrastructure.

Who is Carrying the Weight?

The current struggle with identity-based student organizations is both structural and personal. In the current climate, many institutions have restructured or eliminated financial support for DEI-related programs, including identity centers and student organizations. With a hit to funding, programming, visibility, and educational capacity, student trust diminishes. Similarly, what often replaces meaningful support is symbolic: renamed offices, carefully worded statements, and institutional lip service that stops short of real advocacy.

Students know better. As one student leader, Zoe, put it, identity-based organizations can feel “appreciated when present, invisible until needed.” Often, it is apathy. Institutions are happy to feature these groups when diversity looks good in a brochure or on a stage. They are far less reliable when those same organizations need sustained resources, quick coordination, or someone willing to solve a problem before it turns into a crisis. Her organization’s major campus-wide event received only a fraction of the funding it needed after an extensive process, and its members are often expected to mentor peers, manage logistics, represent entire communities, and absorb institutional inconsistency without adequate backup. Being invited to lead without being resourced, she suggested, feels less like empowerment and more like being overlooked.

This burden of tokenized hypervisibility and institutional apathy does not fall on students alone. Burnout affects staff too, especially BIPOC staff and those whose work is tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion, who often absorb invisible emotional labor at the intersection of institutional expectations and student needs. Research on Black student services professionals shows that these roles often entail high stress, invisible labor, and burnout, especially when staff are expected to support marginalized students without the time, staffing, or institutional backing to do so effectively (Preston et al., 2023).

Similar patterns appear in work on equity and anti-racism labor in higher education, where racialized professionals are often expected to carry this work as if it were natural to them rather than labor that requires training, time, and energy (Vong, 2023). One senior multicultural office staff member summed it up this way: they are “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” That is not a healthy way to run a campus. It is a good way to exhaust people, keeping them together. Too often, these organizations are sustained not by intentional institutional design but by people’s willingness to keep carrying what institutions have not fully supported. Resilience may be one outcome of these spaces, but it should not be used as an excuse to ask students and staff to survive without the tools they need.

What Students Still Find and Make Possible

And yet, students keep returning to identity-based student organizations not because they are easy, but because, for many, these spaces are home. Zoe’s APIDA organization gave her something the institution could not: a place where she did not have to choose which version of herself to bring. She was not only an athlete, an APIDA student, or a leader. The cultural organization was the one place that could hold all those identities at once. On campuses where students are often asked to code-switch, compartmentalize, or perform whichever version of themselves feels safest in the room, that kind of authentic, vulnerable wholeness and genuineness is no small thing. It is one reason identity-based student organizations continue to matter so deeply. 

These organizations also continue to build real skills through real work. When a venue fell through shortly before a major event, Zoe learned crisis communication under pressure. Budget fights taught her advocacy, negotiation, and how to make a compelling case within a bureaucracy that did not always see the event's value as the community did. Volunteer shortages taught her to recognize burnout not only in herself but also in others. Students may first come for community, but they often leave with critical soft skills and interpersonal and professional capacities shaped by lived forms of judgment, coordination, and care that follow them well beyond college. 

What these spaces make possible, then, is belonging, resilience, and growth that feel both immediate and durable. Students continue to invest in them because they still offer something precious: a place to be seen, to build with others, and to become more whole in the process.

What Institutions Need to Rethink

Here is what student leaders wish the institution understood: they are, first and foremost, students. Not only event planners, peer mentors, cultural ambassadors, but also the people institutions call for “the student perspective.” They are also students who need care, support, and room to struggle without everything collapsing around them.

For Zoe, belonging is built into the day-to-day grind. It was built, or lost, in the speed of an email response, the quality of informal conversations, and the ways appreciation and recognition are shown. Many colleges still equate visibility with genuine support. A cultural night may receive applause, and a graduation celebration might produce great photos, but neither proves that the institution is backing the people doing the work. In Zoe’s experience, visibility was never the problem; rather, it was the lack of support. The school appeared for the celebratory moment, but not for the labor that made it possible. Real support often came from other sources: housing staff, library colleagues, and those who checked in regularly without needing a special occasion.

That should push institutions to rethink several things. First, support cannot be mostly ceremonial. If identity-based student organizations are important, then funding, advising, scheduling, and basic coordination must reflect the real labor involved. Second, colleges need to stop treating student resilience as an unlimited natural resource. Students can be proud of what they built and still be tired of what it cost them. Third, schools need to stop confusing equal procedure with fair support. A one-size-fits-all process may look neutral on paper, but it can flatten real differences in labor, audience, and campus impact. Finally, institutions need to listen more carefully when students say they feel appreciated when present and invisible until needed. That is not a messaging problem. It is a structural one.

Identity-based student organizations are still doing some of the hardest and most human work on campus in 2026. They are building community, teaching leadership, carrying grief, marking joy, and helping students stay engaged. If colleges want these organizations to survive, they will need to do more than praise them. They will need to support them in ways that prepare students for strength, sustainability, and success.

References

Astin, A. W. (1984). Student involvement: A developmental theory for higher education. Journal of College Student Personnel, 25(4), 297–308.

Chickering, A. W., & Reisser, L. (1993). Education and identity (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Komives, S. R., Lucas, N., & McMahon, T. R. (2019). Student involvement and leadership development. In Student services: A handbook for the profession (6th ed.). Wiley.

Kuk, L., & Banning, J. H. (2010). Student organizations and institutional diversity efforts: A typology. College Student Journal, 44(2), 354–362.  https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ917226

Museus, S. D. (2008). The role of ethnic student organizations in fostering African American and Asian American students’ cultural adjustment and membership at predominantly White institutions. Journal of College Student Development, 49(6), 568–586. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.0.0043

Phinney, J. S. (1989). Stages of ethnic identity development in minority group adolescents. The  Journal of Early Adolescence, 9(1–2), 34–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431689091004 Preston, P. J., Brown, G. C., Garnett, T., Sanchez, D., Fagbamila, E., & Graham, N. (2023). “I am never enough”: Factors contributing to secondary traumatic stress and burnout among Black student services professionals in higher education. Trauma Care, 3(2), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.3390/traumacare3020010

Sasso, P. A., Bullington, K. E., & Perry, L. (2023). Belonging, racializing, and placemaking in student organizations for multiracial college student leaders. Journal of Campus Activities Practice and Scholarship, 5(3), 9–23. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1419550.pdf

Strayhorn, T. L. (2019). College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315297293

Vong, S. (2023). The five labors of equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism work. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 7(3/4). * https://doi.org/10.33137/ijidi.v7i3/4.41002