Strict Utah law cut DEI from colleges. Affected students say they no longer feel valued
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SALT LAKE CITY — Nevaeh Parker, president of the Black Student Union at the University of Utah, has spent much of the school year scrambling to salvage her organization, undercut by matters far beyond student control.
A new Utah law banning diversity, equity and inclusion programming at public colleges took effect July 1, eliminating the Black Student Union’s $11,000 in university funding, shutting down its gathering center and taking away staff support for an organization that for more than 50 years has been helping Black students succeed in college.
As a condition of remaining a university-sponsored and funded organization, the group had to agree to never talk about bias, discrimination and identity politics on campus. The students refused — along with three other campus affinity groups.
Now the Black Student Union, the Asian American Assn., the Pacific Islander Assn. and LGBTQ+ students are fending for themselves, scrambling to find community support, advisors, mentoring and a place to meet, while feeling they are no longer valued on campus.
As President Trump sets out to ban DEI efforts across the federal government and in schools, colleges and businesses, Utah’s law and its impact at the University of Utah offer a case study on what a college campus looks like without race- and gender-based campus programs. Utah is among at least 15 states with DEI bans in schools and higher education institutions.
Utah’s law prohibits public universities, K-12 schools and government offices “from engaging in discriminatory practices” based on a person’s race, color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion or gender identity. The law states it “does not impact” academic freedom or research and classroom instruction, among other issues.
When it comes to speech, “an institution may not take, express, or assert a position or opinion” on anti-racism, bias, critical race theory, implicit bias, intersectionality, prohibited discriminatory practices, racial privilege,” the law states. Diversity training is also banned.
Schools are on alert after the Department of Education said it would cut federal funding unless they abolished diversity, equity and inclusion programs, potentially including culturally themed campus housing and graduation ceremonies.
Parker and others said that agreeing to limit their speech on issues important to them was the line they could not cross to keep their university support.
“Those things are not political, those things are real, and they impact the way students are able to perform on campus,” Parker said.
Alex Tokita, a senior who is the president of the Asian American Student Assn., said obeying the law is “bonkers.”
“It’s frustrating to me that we can have an MLK Jr. Day, but we can’t talk about implicit bias,” Tokita said. “We can’t talk about critical race theory, bias, implicit bias.”
As a student, Tokita can use these words and discuss these concepts. But when speaking as part of a university-sponsored organization, using such speech is against the law.
The university responds
Utah’s law, House Bill 261, known as “Equal Opportunity Initiatives,” arose from a conservative view that DEI initiatives promote different treatment of students based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Violators risk losing state funding.
To comply with the law, the University of Utah closed its Black Cultural Center, the Center for Equity and Student Belonging, the LGBT Resource Center and the Women’s Resource Center — in addition to making funding cuts to the student affinity groups.
Instead, the university opened a new Center for Community and Cultural Engagement to offer programming for education, celebration and awareness of different identity and cultural groups. A new Center for Student Access and Resources offers practical support services such as counseling to all students, regardless of identity.
The law allows Utah colleges to operate cultural centers, so long as they offer only “cultural education, celebration, engagement, and awareness to provide opportunities for all students to learn with and from one another,” according to guidance from the Utah System of Higher Education.
For many students, the changes had little effect. Utah’s undergraduate population is about 63% white, 14% Latino, 8% Asian and 1% Black. Gender identity and sexuality among students are not tracked.
How students are coping
Parker said she is dedicated to keeping the BSU going because it means so much to her fellow Black students. She said several of her peers have told her they don’t feel they have a place on campus and are considering dropping out.
“The students are hurting,” she said, adding that she too is struggling.
Amid President Trump’s attack on DEI, California schools and colleges aim to keep diversity efforts intact while skirting clashes with the administration.
“I feel as though me living in this Black body automatically makes myself and my existence here political, I feel like it makes my existence here debatable and questioned,” Parker said. “I feel like every single day I’m having to prove myself extra.”
So she continues her work, organizing the group’s monthly meetings on a bare-bones budget — about $1,000 from the student government, which serves more than 100 clubs. She often drives to pick up the pizza to avoid wasting precious dollars on delivery fees. She’s helping organize community events outside the purview of the university to help Black, Asian and Latino students build relationships with one another and connect with professionals working in Salt Lake City for mentorship and networking opportunities.
A group of queer and transgender students formed a student-run Pride Center, with support from the local Utah Pride Center. A few days a week, they set up camp in a study room in the library. They bring in Pride flags, informational fliers and rainbow stickers to distribute. Without an official center, they sit at a big table in case other students come looking for a space to study or spend time with friends.
What the university is doing
Lori McDonald, the university’s vice president of student affairs, said so far, her staff has not seen as many students spending time in the two new centers as they did when that space was the Women’s Resource Center and the LGBT Resource Center.
“I still hear from students who are grieving the loss of the centers that they felt such ownership of and comfort with,” McDonald said. “I expected that there would still be frustration with the situation, but yet still carrying on and finding new things.”
Katy Hall, a Republican state representative who co-sponsored the legislation, said in an email she wanted to ensure that support services were available to all students and that barriers to academic success were removed.
“My aim was to take the politics out of it and move forward with helping students and Utahns to focus on equal treatment under the law for all,” Hall said. “Long term, I hope that students who benefitted from these centers in the past know that the expectation is that they will still be able to receive services and support that they need.”
Concerns ahead
Research has shown that a sense of belonging at college contributes to improved engagement in class and campus activities and to retaining students until they graduate.
“When we take away critical supports that we know have been so instrumental in student engagement and retention, we are not delivering on our promise to ensure student success,” said Royel M. Johnson, director of the national assessment of collegiate campus climates at the USC Race and Equity Center.
Kirstin Maanum is the director of the new Center for Student Access and Resources; it administers scholarships and guidance previously offered by the now-closed centers. She formerly served as the director of the Women’s Resource Center.
“Students have worked really hard to figure out where their place is and try to get connected,” Maanum said. “It’s on us to be telling students what we offer and even in some cases, what we don’t, and connecting them to places that do offer what they’re looking for.”
That has been difficult, she said, because the changeover happened so quickly, even though some staffers from the closed centers were reassigned to the new centers.
The new way of doing things
Last fall, the new Center for Community and Cultural Engagement hosted a fall event around the time of National Coming Out Day in October, with a screening of “Paris Is Burning,” a film about transgender women and drag queens in New York City in the 1980s.
Afterward, two staff members led a discussion with the students, prefacing that talk with a disclaimer saying that they were not speaking on behalf of the university.
Center staffers also created an altar for students to observe Día de los Muertos, held an event to celebrate Indigenous art and has hosted events in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month. But some students lament the loss of dedicated cultural spaces.
For Taylor White, a recent graduate with a degree in psychology, connecting with fellow Black students through BSU events was, “honestly, the biggest relief of my life.”
At the Black Cultural Center, she said, students could talk about what it was like to be the only Black person in their classes or to be Black in other predominantly white spaces. She said that without the support of other Black students, she’s not sure she would have been able to finish her degree.
This article was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
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