College Daze

STUDENT
Dequadray White

MEDIUM
Podcast

Hear this Project!

College Daze is a podcast that showcases true college experiences from the perspectives of Black students from all over, especially those that attend PWIs (Predominantly white institutions). Topics discussed on the podcast range from dating, to parties, to cram sessions, and anything that happens on campus. To gather these stories, I made a post on Facebook to get volunteers for interviews on each episode. I ask them to recount the story in great detail so I can add sensory sounds in the editing process. As for the different people spoken of in the story, I asked a few friends to portray them.

Click here to listen to the podcast.   WARNING: Explicit Language

The term culture shock did not hit me until I stepped foot on my college campus (University of Wisconsin-Madison) freshmen year. I literally traveled across the country from a suburb in Georgia where I went to a school that was 78% Black (out of 1,700 students) to Wisconsin where it’s only 2% Black (out of over 40,000 students). In high school, I witnessed many of my peers worry about other people’s perception of them. The biggest worries were what kind of clothes you wore or seeming to be uncool. Now that I attend a PWI, I am continuously is spaces where I am not judged on things as minuscule, but I am judged on my race.  In an institution that is supposed to prepare me for my career, I along with majority of the Black students on campus face covert and overt forms of racism on a daily basis, from the questioning of our intelligence, to the constant asking to explain Black culture, and what is right or wrong to say, as if we were teachers ourselves. This is why I wanted to create this podcast. I wanted Black students to know that no matter where we are, we share the same stories. It is hard to exist in a system that was not meant for us, but our resilience keeps us afloat. We are here and we deserve to be.  As this continues from episode to episode, I would love to bring new elements to the podcast like a talk show or a scripted series because I want this to be a platform for Black students to connect with as a safe space created for us and by us.