Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs give students a sense of belonging, but many are being forced to close down.

In July of 2020, University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell released a statement titled “A More Diverse and Welcoming Campus.” This statement detailed the university’s new commitment to promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) through several initiatives. From expanding university programs to support future Black leaders to creating a $160 million program that would financially support Black students, all of these initiatives aimed to increase and retain minority presence on campus. 

“During the past month, I have listened to — and spoken with — scores of students about how The University of Texas at Austin can promote diversity, inclusion and equity and fully support our Black students,” President Hartzell wrote. “I came out of them realizing there is still more work to do — and that this work starts and ends by creating an environment in which students, faculty and staff are fully supported before, during and after their time at UT.”

Four years later, on April 2, 2024, President Hartzell wrote to the UT Austin community once again in an email titled “Organizational Changes.” This email announced the upcoming closure of the university’s Division of Campus and Community Engagement (DCCE), a program whose goal was to increase the sense of belonging for minority students by engaging with campus and community members. Hartzell’s email also announced that any funding previously allocated for DEI programs would be deployed elsewhere. 

“We have been evaluating our post-SB 17 portfolio of divisions, programs and positions,” Hartzell wrote in this letter. “The new law has changed the scope of some programs on campus, making them broader and creating duplication with long-standing existing programs supporting students, faculty and staff. Following those reviews, we have concluded that additional measures are necessary to reduce overlap, streamline student-facing portfolios, and optimize and redirect resources into our fundamental activities of teaching and research.”  

The DCCE had a very similar framework to DePaul University’s Cultural and Resource Centers. These centers are the Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi American (APIDA) Cultural Center, Black Cultural Center, Latinx Cultural Center and the LGBTQIA+ Resource Center. They are all located on DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus and “aim to foster community and a sense of belonging for students with intersecting sociocultural identities.” 

The removal of the DCCE caused over 60 professional staff at UT Austin to lose their jobs. These layoffs were self-reported by members of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at UT Austin. The AAUP also stated that 15 associate deans would be terminated on May 31, 2024. 

UT Austin’s removal of these vital student resources came after the passing of Senate Bill 17 (SB 17) — one of many pieces of legislation aiming to resist Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in colleges and universities across the nation. 

The Texas Senate approved SB 17 in April 2023. This bill would implement a ban on diversity training and consideration of diversity statements and essays in university hiring processes. It also required the closure of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices in universities, according to the Texas Tribune. 

The bill was introduced by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe. Creighton says that DEI programs are exclusive and force faculty and students to adhere to certain political beliefs.

After the bill was passed in the Senate, Creighton released a statement on the official website of the Texas Senate that said Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices were discriminating against students based on race, ethnicity and gender.

“The elevation of DEI offices, mandatory diversity statements, political litmus tests and diversity training have the opposite effect and only further divides. DEI programs have become a million-dollar industry at taxpayer-funded institutions — yet they have made no progress advancing or increasing diversity,” Creighton said. 

The statement did add that per the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VII, Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, student-led DEI organizations would be able to remain.

SB 17 was officially signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in June 2023. The law stated that if universities do not remove their DEI programs, they will not receive state-allocated funding.

Texas is not the only state to introduce this kind of legislation. Over the last few years, several states have introduced legislation that targets Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in colleges. As of April 2024, 11 states have passed laws that prevent DEI offices from existing, stop hiring managers from considering diversity statements or prevent schools from looking at race, sex or ethnicity in admissions. In addition to that, 30 bills have been introduced across the country. 

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States that have passed laws restricting DEI include Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, says these laws reverse all previous efforts to support students and faculty of diverse backgrounds. She says Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work is vital to supporting students academically and socially as well as ensuring that students have equal access to opportunity. 

“In attacking Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives and offices, legislators are returning us to a time when historically marginalized students faced extraordinary barriers to earning their degrees and to engaging in the full range of educational experiences, including programs designed for their success,” Granberry Russell said in a statement shared with 14 East. “We all will be worse off if students cannot reach their full potential.”

Students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin are already experiencing negative effects following the removal of the DCCE and the mass firing of staff last April.

University of Texas at Austin Associate Professor and co-director of the Politics of Race and Ethnicity lab Eric McDaniel said that one of the staff members laid off worked in UT Austin’s medical school. McDaniel said that a long history of medical racism has proven the need for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training in medical schools. 

Portrait of Professor Eric McDaniel, courtesy of Eric McDaniel.

“It’s been established that if doctors are not getting this training, they are not going to treat their patients properly,” he said, “And if you’re not able to communicate or have not been taught how to communicate, what you’re going to do is recreate problems. Even though you think you’re solving them, you’re actually going to give worse service to your Black candidates, to your Black faces, than others.”

The University of Texas at Austin had 42,444 undergraduate students enrolled in Fall 2023. Of that number, only 4.5% were Black while 33% were white. The school is also 22% Asian, 25.2% Hispanic, and 9.6% International. 

UT Austin has a history of segregation and has consistently had a low percentage of Black students and minorities as a whole. The school was first integrated in 1956 after Brown v. Board of Education. The university hired its first Black faculty and teaching assistants in the 1960s. 

McDaniel said these types of legislation have a clear racial bias and will make it much more difficult for Black students at the University of Texas at Austin. He says Black students make up a very small amount of the demographic already, and this law will lead fewer marginalized students and faculty to come to the school. 

McDaniel says Black fraternities and sororities now have to step up to fill this new void of resources for Black students. He also calls on Black civil society in Texas to help but notes that he worries they don’t have the infrastructure to deal with the wholeness of the issue.

“It’s made the job of Black faculty of color, and I think, you know, female faculty, even harder, because it’s not just that they’re teaching the classes, doing all these things, but they also have to serve as a bit of a counselor to these students who are kind of traumatized going through these things,” McDaniel said, “And so now they have to take on a much greater weight than their white colleagues but are expected to do the same job.”

“University of Texas Main Building Tower 3” by Kurt Kaiser licensed under cc0-1.0-deed.

Having been at UT Austin for 20 years, McDaniel has seen firsthand how these programs have allowed students of color to feel at home in a predominately white institution. 

“To kind of see something that was unique, because a lot of people, they’ve had a DEI program, but there’s nothing about the community engagement,” McDaniel said, “And one of the things that Texas had a problem — especially with its Black community — is it had a very negative reputation. You hear stories about Black students in the ‘80s, it was not a great experience. So [the DCCE was] about trying to improve the experience for students of color or just students in general.”

He predicts that this legislation will lead fewer Black students to apply to UT Austin and cause them to have trouble recruiting faculty of color, two of the goals President Hartzell put in his statement back in 2020. 

DePaul University’s Cultural and Resource Centers opened in O’Connell Hall in 2018 and have been going strong ever since. While DePaul is also a predominately white institution, these centers do provide some space for minority students to engage with the community and seek identity-specific resources. 

Each center has its own signature programming and a faculty program manager to lead the center. This programming spans from the Dolores Huerta Prayer Breakfast in the Latinx Cultural Center to the Better Black Business Series in the Black Cultural Center. 

Teanla House is a student at DePaul and works as the programming assistant for the Black Cultural Center. She said she found the Black Cultural Center pretty soon after she got to DePaul. 

“The BCC has always been my safe space on DePaul, especially since my sophomore year,” House said. “My freshman year was online, so my first interaction with community was in the Black Cultural Center, and I’ve only seen it grow since then.”

Student reception to DePaul’s Cultural and Resource Centers shows the need for them amid increasing attempts to close similar programs at schools across the country. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are student resources that can allow marginalized students and faculty to feel represented, advocated for and welcomed. 

“It was like a, like a happy surprise, like a good thing that I didn’t know was on campus, but now it makes the experience better,” House said.

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