Hundreds rally at Colorado State University in support of DEIA programs, cultural centers
The Department of Education, in a Feb. 14 letter, directed all colleges, universities and K-12 schools to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and training within 14 days or risk losing their federal funding.
A letter to the CSU campus community from President Amy Parsons on Tuesday acknowledged that the department's new interpretation of nondiscrimination laws 'marks a change.'
'Given the university's reliance on federal funding, it is necessary to take additional steps to follow the federal administration's new interpretations,' Parsons' letter reads. 'Federal funding makes up roughly one-third of CSU's overall budget and includes funding for research, student programs, community partnerships and federal financial aid.'
That interpretation, according to the Department of Education's letter, is based on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. Although that ruling, the directive acknowledged, was narrowly defined to admissions decisions, the Department of Education under President Donald Trump's administration is applying it more broadly.
DEI programs, it said, 'frequently preference racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.'
More: CSU students rally and march to demand public show of support for immigrants on campus
Signs with messages such as 'DEI saves lives,' 'DEI 'til I die,' and "We the people stand together" were held high as the students marched from the Lory Student Center Plaza to the university's Administration Building less than a half-mile away. Chants of 'DEI for all of us,' 'Students united will never be defeated,' 'D-E-I-A,' adding accessibility to the acronym, and others rang out along the way and during a brief rally with people speaking on the front steps looking out across the historic Oval.
Students who organized the rally and march acknowledged the difficult position the Department of Education is putting CSU in but also believe its compliance violates its obligations to protect the rights of its students.
'I completely disagree that Amy Parsons has her hands tied,' student organizer Ella Smith told the Coloradoan. 'She is a lawyer. She claims herself to be a First Amendment scholar, and yet she is not willing, and the university is not willing, to stand up and fight for their students.
'We pay so much money to go here, and the fact that our university is preemptively compliant and that they are kowtowing to fascist, McCarthy-esque ideology is completely ridiculous.'
The students had planned to hand-deliver a letter that had been emailed earlier in the day to Parsons, signed by each of the university's cultural resource, gender-identity, feminist education and disability centers, with 13 specific examples of ways advocates say the university has been 'proactively hiding, pausing, or dismantling access to resources, programming and education for CSU students and employees over the last few months.' Those examples included claims of pauses and elimination of DEI and Safe Zone training programs, the removal of the word 'undocumented' from all CSU websites and removal of webpages created specifically for undocumented students, concerns that the academic department of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies is being 'dismantled,' a pause on hiring within the resource centers and the lack of clear instructions 'despite months of asking' from the university's Office of the General Counsel on how to interact or respond to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agents and clarity on what role, if any CSU's Police Department, would have in immigration enforcement on campus.
The letter, though, was inadvertently left behind, student organizer Maggie Van Buskirk told the Coloradoan, noting that Parsons and other university administrators had still received it via email.
'The time for action is now,' reads the letter, which was shared with the Coloradoan. 'CSU's Cultural Resource Centers and DEIA programs represent more than five decades of progress in making higher education accessible to all. Their potential dismantling threatens current programs, the foundation of our land-grant mission, and our commitment to inclusive excellence.'
It was signed by The Asian Pacific American Cultural Center, The Black/African Cultural Center, El Centro, The Native American Cultural Center, The Pride Resource Center, The Survivor Advocacy and Feminist Education Center, The Student Disability Center and the Office of Inclusive Excellence Student Success Unit.
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'I'm hoping that we have raised enough noise to get the administration to pay attention to our demands that we have listed in our letter to them,' Ellery McQueen, another student organizer, told the Coloradoan. 'We are hoping that they will not comply with the Department of Education demand right now and continue to fund our DEI programs that are so very important and our DEI department and choose to support our students instead of their business. CSU should be an institution that is prioritizing education and education for students.'
Nick DeSalvo, president of Associated Students for CSU, said he agrees the Department of Education's new interpretation of nondiscrimination laws puts the university in a difficult position. DeSalvo said he believes Congress needs to step in and fulfill its obligation to control the funding it has authorized.
'The Trump administration is using these land-grant institutions, including CSU, as pawns in their game to play politics, and I would agree that they're in a tough spot: How do we continue to support our mission, which is intrinsically intertwined with DEI work, while also ensuring that the university operate for years to come?' DeSalvo told the Coloradoan.
'It's so difficult, because it's so core to the mission of who we are, not only as a land-grant institution, but an institution that values the principles of service, social justice, integrity, respect, inclusion and playing the balancing game of ensuring that funding stays, as well as ensuring that students feel supported. It's a delicate tightrope to walk.'
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Hundreds rally at CSU in support of DEIA programs, cultural centers
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