Headshots: a media experiment

I found these photos in a UMBC Box shared folder. They were under a production I had worked on, The Amish Project. This folder was titled “Student Photos.” The department has not done headshots for their students in quite some time, and the students in the folder were not exclusively ones who worked on The Amish Project. I’m not sure what these headshots were taken for, or why they were in the Amish Project folder. I’ve uploaded these photos in the order they appeared online, without providing the names of the students. I ask for your responses on what you observe about the photos of these students. This is a decent sampling size of the student body within the department. What do you notice? How does it compare with your expectations? With the observations about the Department faculty featured in my first media experiment? Does the department, as many have claimed, significantly lack students of color? Why might this perception persist?

All photos provided by the UMBC Department of Theatre via UMBC Box. Photographer unknown.