30 June 2024

Utah law targeting DEI leads university to close LGBT, women’s centers

The Utah law labeled services for different communities — racial, ethnic, religious, gender-based or sexuality-based — as “discriminatory.”

This spring, lawmakers in Alabama and Iowa passed similar bills to restrict DEI programs, and Wyoming removed state funding for the state university’s DEI office, forcing its closure. In mid-June, Republican members of Congress introduced a bill proposing to end all federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs and pull funding from government agencies, schools and others with DEI programs.

The law’s passage in Utah played to the more conservative wing of a divided Republican Party, said Michael Lyons, a political science professor at Utah State University. In an election year, Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and other GOP lawmakers faced the need to win over party delegates in Utah’s caucus-based nominating process.

Utah law targeting DEI leads university to close LGBT, women’s centers

The effects of a Utah law rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public colleges are beginning to emerge.

The Washington Post

13 hours ago

Utah law targeting DEI leads Univ. of Utah to close student centers - The Washington Post

By Justine McDaniel

June 29, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Across Utah, public schools, universities and government agencies must make shifts to comply with the law, which goes into effect Monday.

The state becomes the latest where Republican legislators have restricted DEI programs, amid a broader conservative effort to limit what is taught in schools and make diversity programs a flash point in the nation’s political debate.

Laws in other states have forced some universities to eliminate programs and jobs and, more commonly, to change hiring practices, such as ending requirements for diversity statements from job candidates.

Some type of change to diversity requirements or programs has been made at 164 college campuses in 23 states since January 2023, according to a tally by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

At the University of Utah, administrators said they have had less than two months — the bill was passed in January, but the state higher education office’s guidance about how to comply with the law came down in May — to make final decisions about how to reorganize their staff and services.

The school won’t lose its student services and will continue holding cultural events, but complying with the law will require a significant change in approach, administrators said. . .
Although it left their funding in place, it effectively directed schools to reorganize those services, such as mental health, career and scholarship help, under generalized campus centers catering to all students.
Furthermore, the state’s guidance indicated those services couldn’t operate in centers that also did cultural programming.

At the University of Utah, school officials said that means closing its specialized centers in favor of two umbrella offices: one for all cultural programming and another for all student services. The school’s Division of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion has been eliminated. About 45 staff were affected, many of whom will be reassigned to the two new centers.

“This is not the path we would have chosen,” University Provost Mitzi Montoya wrote in a note to deans and faculty Thursday.

“But … it is our calling to rise to the challenges of the day and find a better way forward.” . . .