Mission
What does it mean to be a UVM student?
Behind the mountain views and sustainability courses lies a carefully constructed cultural system so effective at maintaining homogeneity that it doesn’t need explicit barriers to keep certain people out.
Granola Dialogue is an investigative project that peels back the layers of the University of Vermont’s campus culture, revealing how its dominant “granola” ethos—rooted in outdoorsy aesthetics, progressive branding, and unspoken norms—serves as the gatekeeper to a university that systematically defines, and prides itself, on an architecture of structural exclusion, where belonging hinges on fitting a narrow, often privileged mold rather than embracing true diversity.
The evidence is hiding in plain sight, from campus climate surveys to scrolling through UVM's official Instagram, and it reveals how one of America’s most “progressive” universities serves as a case study in how institutions can discriminate without ever admitting it, not only on campus, but before most even apply.
Granola
Dialogue
