Interracial Friendships across the College Years: Evidence from a Longitudinal Case Study

In this study the authors explored factors that influence the degree to which students' campus friends are of a different race or ethnicity. They focused on relationships that were more sustained and that involved greater trust than routine interactions on campus, but were less intimate than best or closest friends. Recent studies show that high school experiences are associated with having friendships that cross racial-ethnic boundaries in college, and that having a different-race roommate can provide opportunities to form interracial friendships. Using survey data from the Campus Life & Learning Project--a prospective panel study of students at a selective, private university in the Southeastern United States--they extend the existing literature by considering the experiences of White, Black, Latino, and Asian students, and by examining a broad range of college activities. Their results indicate that students' friendships become less diverse from the first to the fourth years, and that aspects of the residential environment, interactions with faculty, types of extracurricular participation, and the presence of alcohol at social events are significant predictors of having interracial campus friendships.