Take time to read a little more in the Discussion section of your… Take time to read a little more in the Discussion section of your article. Were the researchers able to answer their research questions? What did they learn from their research? (It might be challenging to understand, so make your best guess based on the context clues you find in these paragraphs. Keep in mind that these are highly academic, and it’s okay if you are not 100% sure you understand the implications of this research — it isn’t your field of study!) Ahmed (2012) wrote “phenomenology allows us to theorize how a reality is given by becoming background, as that which is taken for granted” (p. 21). In this study, what became apparent was that by leveraging the textual tools of inspiration porn, affective shifts, and moral slips, universities push to the background, or make normal, non-performatives that relieve them of the duty to truly support undocumented students. Moreover, institutional will is set toward consuming and dissipating any potential movement toward justice and transformation that difference may initiate. Thus, while institutions were quick to suggest DREAMers were “productive” and “valuable” members of institutional life, it was only to the extent to which the institution marked them as “good” and deserving people, which are terms set by the ongoing discourses of whiteness, neoliberalism, and ethnocentrism within which U.S. colleges and universities are beset. Our analysis uncovers an institutional life that leaves much to be desired, and adds to the ongoing debate regarding how, if, and/or when institutions must engage with truly equitable and just action that recognizes the humanity of undocumented students as people worthy of receiving an education (Jefferies, 2009; Patel, 2016). In essence, our study begs the questions: is education a public good? And if so, who is considered part of the public for whom education is good?Readers of these letters take for granted the fact that undocumented students’ lives are under constant threat of violence, emotional harm, and physical safety. What then becomes a reality is empty promises and state- ments of support, emotional relation, and future action that may never come to fruition. In fact, as our analysis exposed, these statements may be written in ways to not require any future action as their raison d’être. The habit of maintaining and shifting the template of institutional responses become the habit of the institution. As Ahmed (2012) wrote, “When something becomes a habit . . . it saves trouble and energy . . . it does not have to command your attention” (p. 26). By making these templates habit, campuses assert that the possibility of supporting undocumented students unconditionally is inactionable, unconscionable, and fiscally and politically untenable. The university is indeed in a “calculated conversation” (Patel & Sanchez Ares, 2014, p. 148) with undocumented students and allies, moving only so far forward as to not fundamentally change the system.The positioning of universities as ‘at the will of ‘ legal doctrine posits an additional question: is higher education an engine for changing society? When linking our findings to those of Cole and Harper (2016), the answer is, unequivocally, no. In fact, the purpose of higher education is to maintain the nationalistic, neoliberal discourse that aims to reinforce the status quo via the process of minority absorption. This also points to a clear collusion of inaction shared by all institutions in their use of a similar template. Even the Pomona College statement that had 703 signatories at the time of publishing relies on gatekeeping language that otherizes undocumented students, does not act to change the status of the discussion, and relies on legalistic solutions.Cole and Harper (2016) wrote, “The choice of what is or is not said in presidential rhetoric determines what, or in this case who, is valuable” (p. 10). In our analysis, what is not said is that undocumented students are a unique set of people deserving to be understood as fully human, as well as deserving safety and education in the only country they have known as home. The desire for diversity without a recognition and shift in systemic oppression results in a reification of white settler colonialism and white su- premacy (Patel, 2015; Tuck & Yang, 2012). That is, whiteness is linked to the owning and access to property and the entities existing on such property, in this case university property and education (Harris, 1993). The entitlement to this property is challenged consistently as is apparent by the continued attack on affirmative action and the original purposes of education (e.g., deculturation of indigenous people, white men’s education, and religious training) stemming from its origins (Patel, 2015). A desire for diversity is also a proxy for people of color that leaves white supremacy intact (Patel, 2015). A desire for “good” diversity, paired with an #AllStudentsMatter rhetoric, inherently connects goodness to all students at the university, and therefore, the university as good. Because universities are good and only admit good students, they are therefore machines of a racial economy that privilege the ongoing reification of institutional whiteness. In this case, good students are taxpayers, contributors to the economy, engage in rigorous intellectual pursuits, and follow the law (Jefferies, 2009). These racialized speech acts position whiteness as normal and reveal a previously undefined racial con- sciousness (Matias & Newlove, 2017).   Arts & Humanities English ENGL 1A