An Anthropological Analysis of Student Participation in College.
In this article I take issue with Tinto's widely accepted theoretical model that views college participation as if it were a "rite of passage" where academic and social integration is essential for student persistence. First, I argue that Tinto has misinterpreted the anthropological notions of ritual, and in doing so he has created a theoretical construct with practical implications that hold potentially harmful consequences for racial and ethnic minorities. I critique the epistemological argument Tinto has articulated that of social integration from a cultural perspective informed by critical theory [11, 12, 13, 14, 36]. That is, I take a social constructionist view of reality and I operate from the perspective that the purpose of our theoretical models is not merely to describe the world, but to change it. I then highlight the practical or "real world" implications of a social integrationist stance by deconstructing the discourse of two college administrators who were part of a two year investigation pertaining to the college-going patterns of American Indian college students [36]. The administrators describe how they perceived Native American students'