Student resistance across the nation has surged since 2014, as students protest, demonstrate, and sit-in and die-in against racism on their campuses, and around the broader and parallel issues of students feeling unacknowledged, silenced, and oppressed by their colleges and universities. These protests are not merely symbolic demonstrations of collective unhappiness, but are larger critiques about national issues, such as racism, by students demanding institutional action and accountability. The similarity of student demands from decade to decade suggests something is not working...we need to not only reconsider how we frame the issue, but how we "conceptualize" it. Instead of examining the impact of student resistance and activism on institutional accountability, what of the reverse direction--how institutional responses and (lack of) accountability sustain the very campus racial climates that concern and suffocate students. This change in perspective leads to the conceptualization of what the author calls the "Institutional Response Framework" as a way to analyze the relationship between higher education institutions and the student activists who push for institutional improvement with regard to campus racial climate. This paper is part of the next generation of scholarship needed to merge student resistance, institutional accountability, and organizational theory.