In his early days on the University of Washington campus as a freshman, Kaid Tipton got his first taste of what it was going to be like as a student of color at the state’s most elite public school.

He ran into a former classmate from Kentridge High School in Kent, who greeted him with a puzzled look on her face. “Kaid, what are you doing here?”

“I’m walking to class …” he said. His classmate look baffled. “Wait, you go to school here?”

To Tipton, a track star who worked hard in high school to get top grades, whose guiding philosophy was to disprove stereotypes about black male athletes, there was a clear subtext to the awkward question: Do you really belong here?