ABSTRACT
From the early days of the student affairs profession, theorists have recognized the impact of environment on the lives of the individuals who populate our campuses. Kurt Lewin (1936) proposed the formula B = f (P, E) to explain that behavior (B) is a function (f ) of the interaction of a person (P) and his or her environment (E). Kaiser (1975) applied Lewin's concept to the college setting and identified this interaction as a “transactional relationship” in which “the students shape the environment and are shaped by it” (p. 38). Unfortunately, when we consider concepts such as these in the general sense, we tend to focus on the impact that environment has on all the members of the community as a single entity. Typically, we look at the interaction of environment with the elements of culture as reflected in the dominant American culture. While this may help us gauge the impact of environment on the cultural and social lives of students who are part of the dominant American culture, it does not accommodate the differences that exist among people who do not embrace the dominant culture. Strange and Banning (2015) discussed findings from a 1991 report by the Council of Ontario Universities that concluded “The environment is experienced differently according to a person's ethnicity, race, class, age, ability, and sexuality” (p. 182). Thus, it becomes necessary to examine the impact of environment through alternate cultural perspectives to observe how the same element of the environment can have different—sometimes minute, sometimes drastic—effects on the inhabitants of the community whose characteristics differ from those of the dominant majority.
