{"id":18969,"date":"2026-04-02T18:14:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=18969"},"modified":"2026-04-02T18:14:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:14:50","slug":"the-belonging-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/the-belonging-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"The Belonging Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.<\/em>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
\n\u2013 <\/em>Maya Angelou<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Onion didn\u2019t lie. And we out here know it.<\/p>\n

The satirical publication recently named the University of Toledo the nation\u2019s top school \u201cto attend for a semester before dropping out to do hair.\u201d The university president made a self-deprecating video. The mayor joked about his thinning hairline. Toledo\u2019s leadership declared, as always, that we are a city that can take a punch.<\/p>\n

You know what? \u00a0A joke only lands when it exposes something true. The Onion called out a reality at UT\u2014many students, especially Black and brown students, drift through or leave without finishing. That is not new or funny to us; it\u2019s something our community has faced alone for years.<\/p>\n

UT’s enrollment is dropping fast. Meanwhile, Bowling Green State University and Owens Community College are surging.<\/p>\n

The explanation is urgent, but simple: It has a birth certificate. The 2007-08 Great Recession sharply and relentlessly suppressed birth rates nationwide. The babies not born during that period are today’s missing college students. Now, a dwindling pool is divided among as many or more Midwestern institutions. Every university in the region is scrambling for fewer students.<\/p>\n

But what Higher Ed administrators call the \u201cdemographic cliff\u201d did not fall evenly. Black births have held steady. Latino birth rates, instead of plateauing, surged by a third in the last decade. By 2045, Latinos are projected to compose a quarter of the U.S. population. Which universities survive this contraction hinges entirely on Black and brown students. Every enrollment strategist already knows this.<\/p>\n

So why isn’t the University of Toledo acting like it?”<\/p>\n

Community observers say the issue is not resources, location or program quality. UT has a College of Nursing, a College of Engineering, a College of Law, and its own medical center \u2014 UTMC. \u00a0Moreover, UT recently earned R1 research designation \u2014 the highest Carnegie classification for research activity. On paper, UT should be drawing students from across the region.<\/p>\n

The core issue is belonging. UT has programs and accolades, but students\u2014especially from Black and brown communities\u2014do not feel at home. That is what\u2019s missing.<\/p>\n

When asked to explain the gap between UT and BGSU, both community members and higher education observers, unprompted, pointed to one word: belonging.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the reality: belonging is not a program. You can manufacture task forces, rename offices or departments, rebrand websites\u2014none of it creates true belonging. It\u2019s embedded in the culture, or it\u2019s absent, with no in-between.<\/p>\n

The theologian Walter Wink wrote that every institution \u2014 every school, every corporation, every organization \u2014 has both an outer form and an inner spirit. That inner spirit, he argued, is not metaphor. It is as real as the buildings and budgets, and something you can feel as soon as you walk into a building or set foot on a campus. It animates the institution, legitimates it and either draws people in or pushes them away. What our community has been describing \u2014 that feeling you get when you walk onto the BGSU campus versus the UT campus \u2014 is not sentiment. It is Wink\u2019s inner spirit made visible in a golf cart, a move-in-day handshake and a sweatshirt sported on a weekday.<\/p>\n

At Bowling Green, the university president gets in a golf cart to personally greet a promising recruit. On move-in day, leadership helps families unpack their cars. These are not photo ops or grand gestures. They are daily acts that communicate a single message: you matter here. BGSU has deliberately built that culture, and it shows \u2014 in enrollment numbers, in retention rates, in the Falcon gear you see on an ordinary Tuesday.<\/p>\n

When was the last time you saw an African American in a UT sweatshirt or tee, period? Or driving around town with a UT license plate? I haven\u2019t. That\u2019s not an accident\u2014it\u2019s a warning sign.<\/p>\n

Pride and belonging aren\u2019t just feelings; they signal institutional health. By this measure, UT is falling short\u2014especially for Black and brown students.<\/p>\n

UT\u2019s silence is also damning. The last publicly-accessible campus climate survey was conducted in 2017. Nearly a decade has gone by. We have no published data on whether people at UT feel they belong. Has anyone even asked?<\/p>\n

UT\u2019s board, I am told, is operating under genuine political pressure from Columbus. \u00a0The systematic dismantling of diversity programs has produced what one observer called institution fear \u2014 leaving a university gone quiet on inclusion, quiet on community partnership, quiet on what it is doing to recruit and retain Black and Latino students \u2014 at precisely the moment when the community it sits in needs it to speak.<\/p>\n

BGSU faces the same pressure but acts. The difference is stark: they have the will. UT must find it\u2014fast.<\/p>\n

This is not a one-sided conversation. The Black and brown community needs UT \u2014 its programs, its credentials, its pathways to professional futures. And UT needs this community just as urgently.<\/p>\n

The demographic math is clear. The pool of traditional 18-year-old college students is shrinking and will not recover. The only pipelines able to sustain enrollment are communities with stable or growing birth rates\u2014Black and Latino communities\u2014and non-traditional adult learners, whom community colleges have long embraced but four-year universities have not. Black and brown students are key to the institution’s survival.<\/p>\n

We ain\u2019t hard to find. People in the North end, in East Toledo, in barbershops, and in Black churches \u2014 they already know why Black students choose Bowling Green over Toledo. Go ask them. Then listen instead of doing all the talking. Do the same in the Latino community. Treat the experience as a covenant, not a photo op or press release.<\/p>\n

Then, put those answers into policy, into scholarship endowments, into hiring, into the physical culture of welcome that currently exists 20 minutes south down I-75 and somehow not here.<\/p>\n

Yes, Toledo can take a punch as well as anyone. But we would like, for once, to stop getting punched and having to get back \u201cup out of the mud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, The Onion came to Toledo in search of a laugh. What it found \u2014 a university associated with interrupted ambitions rather than realized ones \u2014 is something this community has not had the luxury of laughing off.<\/p>\n

So, the core question is: Do Black and brown students truly \u201cbelong\u201d at the University of Toledo? Or do they not?<\/p>\n

Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, \u00a0at <\/em>drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D. The Truth Contributor \u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. \u2013 Maya Angelou The Onion didn\u2019t lie. And we out here know it. The satirical publication recently named the University of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[341],"class_list":["post-18969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18970,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18969\/revisions\/18970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18969"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=18969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}