"Rick Bonus has provided us with important insights into what it might take to transform colleges and universities so that those who have been historically underserved can thrive in higher education. By placing the experiences of Pacific Islanders at the center of his analysis, Bonus brings incisive critique and profound authenticity to a subject that has bedeviled the efforts of educators for many years. For educators and others who seek to ensure that access to academia is available to marginalized and disadvantaged students, this book will be an eye-opener." — Pedro A. Noguera, coeditor of Race, Equity, and Education: Sixty Years from Brown
“In The Ocean in the School, Rick Bonus eloquently shows how indigenous and minority students mobilized against the colonialisms and racisms of higher education. With his focus on the Pacific Islander students of the University of Washington, he demonstrates how they forged a collective identity, protested administrative negligence, developed study groups, and conducted outreach programs. Clearly, Bonus brings much compassion, insight, and rigor to the interplay between Pacific Islander students, multiethnic coalitions, and public education. This book is thus essential reading for anybody who studies the decolonization of modern institutions.” — Keith L. Camacho, author of Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam
"Rick Bonus offers a comprehensive ethnographic work that examines challenges faced by Pacific Islanders (PI) and their allies at the University of Washington (UW), and their strategies to overcome these roadblocks. . . . This wider audience is certainly pleased by rich, authentic and semi poetic accounts of participants’ stories and lives. This style does not harm the rigorous methodological work, where Bonus thoroughly analyses field-notes, diaries and transcripts of interviews to offer detailed description and analyses of the transformations that these students went through while transforming their university." — Thiago Bogossian, Ethnic and Racial Studies