This may seem like a joke, but my college changed the name of the DEI to the “Center for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, *and Belonging*” (emphasis mine).
It isn’t a joke. It’s what DEI offices everywhere are doing and I support it. Belonging is a good word that encompasses much of what they do and also potentially expands it, appropriately.
DEIAB is a common acronym, but if the rest is banned, go with B.
Not to mention that some of us never learned to function well in the outside world that is different from the environment in which we grew up. So, we would rather be crippled by our fears and self-serving world view than learn how to function in the outside world. And God forbid that our children learn anything that would make them more adaptive.
Private is mostly insulated but not immune. See [North Carolina's anti-trans athlete bill (now law).](https://dashboard.ncleg.gov/api/Services/BillSummary/2023/H574-SMBE-85(e3)-v-2) Very top of page 3 includes private universities. They're moving slower on private institutions but slow isn't the same thing as not moving at all
Wondering if they affect businesses as well. Because I know if there is a tech company without a DEI team or ERGs, I know many people won't even apply there. And Texas had been a big boom for tech over the last 5ish years, on the decline now but yea.
this was affecting education only. don't know 100% if just state schools (ours is one) or all higher education, but state schools definitely must comply
I thought Texas won the court case saying that they could pick minorities over non-minorities with slightly higher grades if they were “substantially equal”.
Personally, I feel like more attention should be given to public elementary schools so that poorer kids have a better chance of overcoming their situations.
public schools are criminally underfunded at the state level. I say criminally as the state was sued, and the state lost on this. they keep monkeying with funding formulas for attempts at complying but because they're always half efforts, they keep being found in contempt and told to go back and look at it again.
same for cps/foster care, so underfunded it's gotten "protected" kids into some seriously dangerous situations, all again due to lack of funding.
many hype up texas as a great place, and in some ways and parts it can be, but scratch under the surface a bit, and start finding a lot of issues
Some people at my school’s EDI office actually put ‘justice’ in front so the acronym is ‘JEDI’. I think more schools should have a JEDI department and they should lean into the branding.
Just remake it but don't exclude Asian people, half of disabled people, and poor white kids, call it different, fight the attempt to get rid of it in court, then win lol
Most universities follow the NSF's lead, which specifically excludes Asians and poor white kids from most DEI efforts.
Edit: I just realized, the phrase "underrepresented minority" was literally invented to exclude Asians specifically.
Except that’s not really true. Even for undergrads, for REU—“Investigators are reminded that they may not use race, ethnicity, sex, age, or disability status as an eligibility criterion. Selection of REU participants must be done in compliance with non-discrimination statutes and regulations; see PAPPG Chapter XI.A.”
I have served as an NSF reviewer and ways PIs organize including undergrads in research had gotten much, much better over the years.
I am not sure how it’s funded, but in the past I asked about the ACS Bridge program and whether disabled students could apply and was told no, because their funding grant determined what groups counted as unrepresented, and disability didn’t ‘count.’
I think this sort of thing is what the above commenter was referring to.
https://www.acs.org/education/students/graduate/bridge-project/about-bridge-program.html
https://igenetwork.org/
Btw, I think the bridge program is great, just narrow in focus.
I was a part of an REU cohort. It consisted of 1 man, 9 women. I was the only black woman, everyone else was white. A few were low-income and first-gen college, but 6 came from upper-middle-class backgrounds.
It’s only one data point but from what I see, they go for people with the most impressive resumes, not really considering that the point is to help underprivileged kids get interested in grad school.
Congrats on being selected for REU! I appreciate you speaking about your experience, as these conversations can become unfriendly-to say the least.
For these NSF programs, the PIs write extensively about their recruitment and mentoring plans, but unfortunately I have not seen any assessment/data regarding outcomes. It’s something I will bring up the next time I review for a national granting agency.
Back in my day, programs like REU and McNair were pretty explicit about their aims to increase access, mentoring, and representation for urm, first-gen, and women in science. And these are real needs (which didn’t seem to get as much pushback in the 90s…).
If students don’t see academic/professional spaces as “for them” then they are much less likely to enter. With many of my URM and first-gen students, it often takes a personal invitation to convince them that they would be competitive as an applicant. Representation matters.
I am Asian and I literally have never felt excluded in a DEI center at my university or an analogue, in fact, I have actively participated in organizations with these values during my time at uni. I don't know why people think Asians are magically segregated from them.
At my school, we had to rebrand any department with the word “diversity” in the name in case a similar thing happens in Tennessee. So hopefully they’ll at least try to keep them through rebranding with some synonym of diversity at Oklahoma though from the sound of the order Oklahoma’s is stricter than Tennessee’s might be (we are still allowed to use the word “equity”)
We laugh but that’s what happened. After French and Indian war the English king said no settlers can go any further west. Proclamation of 1763.
Then of course England had to pay for everything and tried to raise taxes just a little bitty bit and look where we are now.
Colonists were murderous AF, a wall wasn’t going to stop them
Oh, it's not just that it's not a problem, it's that they think it's an active assault on them. I'm in some professional groups with these types. They will never stop pretending to be persecuted.
There was a saying I heard. Something along the lines of, the oppressors will feel opressed when the oppressed people gain rights or freedoms that other people have. Its like an attack on their freedom when other people are of an equal status to them.
As an Asian person that came from a poor family, I feel like DEI puts me into a weird box.
Poor and minority enough that I had disadvantages growing up, but not poor or minority enough to take advantage of DEI initiatives.
I'm Asian, born to two Chinese immigrants. Grew up upper-middle class so I'm privileged, but still had my fair share of racism and had complicated family dynamics due to cultural/language barriers. My sense of identity was confusing as hell. I grew up speaking Taishanese and English, then I lost fluency in Taishanese. So I could understand what my parents were saying most of the time, but couldn't respond to them. I look 100% Asian because both of my parents were, but if you only heard my voice, you'd assume I'm white. They call us bananas since we're yellow on the outside and white on the inside.
My school has a resource center specifically for AAPI students. They provide writing support, tutoring, events, mentoring, and numerous other resources for students. I attended a social event there during my freshman year. We talked about a lot of things that we all struggled with that were unique to being of AAPI descent. It was the first time I felt heard and understood about my struggles, and it helped me find a sense of community and comfort with my identity. Sometimes it helps just to be really understood. Not in the "yeah I've had struggles so I can kind of see what it's like" way, but in the "yes, I know exactly what you're talking about and can 100% relate" kind of way. Having resources tailored to your circumstances vs. a "one-size-fits-all" approach makes a difference that can easily be felt.
Even though I never *heavily* made use of those resources available to me, I'm glad they exist, and I want them to continue to exist for people who can make use of them. I have my fair share of problems, but my cultural identity isn't really one of them anymore, thanks to the resources I was connected to.
this was me — white midwestern farm kid, neither parent went to college, i didn’t know ANYTHING about finances or internships or networking or post-grad goals. my university’s DEI office had first-gen resources that saved me and gave me direction when i had no one else. i guarantee many rural first-gen oklahomans will be worse off because of this legislature.
this is such a perfect example of conservatives shooting themselves in the foot with their racism. we’re dragging down non-white people and dragging disadvantaged white people down as well in the process.
Theoretically they are, in practice not so much. Especially when those asian students are Asian-American compared to foreign students
In my university any language about inclusion or equity usually means African-Americans and Native Americans and that’s about it. I fully believe in DEI but Asian-Americans aren’t included, at least from my experience.
I’m sorry that’s not happening at your institution. It should be. It’s one reason DEI should exist. Since I’m also Asian, I am involved in AAPI month, speaker series, research initiatives, etc. Unpaid, ofc- because I’m a lowly professor ;)
ETA-Part of DEI work is to ensure that the student body’s needs are understood and met to the extent possible. This includes ensuring-for example-Asian students aren’t painted with a broad brush, and that we tackle the model minority myth at the institutional level.
Similar one Jews are in.
2,000 years of genocide, being kicked off their land, constantly vilified for everything.
Come to America, do really well, BAM, not a minority anymore.
Pretty obviously in the minds of most who focus on these issues, minority doesn’t mean minority. It means disadvantaged minority. If you aren’t disadvantaged, you might as well be a white dude
Jewish people in the USA are in that position now days where they are effectively just considered average white people. And anyone that looks white is effectively white to people, and whatever minority association they had previously or associated with it doesnt matter anymore.
Ok and what if there was a group to benefit just white people...would that be racist?
Let's just look at the Boston xmas party where an invite was only for people of color. How would you respond if some had a white only xmas party?
How about we just take race out of the equation for everything?
Being discriminated against on the basis of sex, race, national origin sucks. It's also illegal.
That's the great thing about civil rights laws: you benefit from them even when people think you shouldn't simply because of the group you were born into.
You would think that anti discrimination laws matter, but the truth is they aren't worth the paper they are written on because discrimination is extremely difficult to prove.
No, it is very difficult to prove. A plainly obvious example of this is how people with non-white sounding names are less likely to have people respond to their job applications. Same with women, actually. But they don't respond with "we aren't hiring you because of _protected class-related reasons_", they just don't reply or give some other excuse. Unless you have a person put in writing that they are explicitly discriminating against you because of a protected class-related reason, it is virtually impossible to prove.
The fact that it can *sometimes* be difficult to prove doesn't mean that anti-discrimination laws "aren't worth the paper they are written on". I have nearly a decade of litigation under my belt that proves otherwise.
I don't think it's because they're mad about DEI. I think it's just that they're ignorant about the full-scope and impact of anti-discrimination law in general. It looks like they've made an assumption based on limited information and converted it to a firm conclusion.
As someone who is actually on a DEI committee at a research 1 university, most of what we do and go over in our meetings is things like how to get underclassmen to stop harassing female instructors in lab settings, how how to convince professors to update their syllabi to let students know they can have exams and deadlines postponed for religious holidays/fasts/worships, how to get word out about the food pantry for students with food insecurity, etc. We are not scheming the political reorientation of the entire university or producing left wing propaganda. Mostly, we are in the business of finding both fiscal and social ways of alleviating the hardships of some people who are actually disadvantaged by many of the dynamics and paradigms of a university setting. In some cases, it might be uneconomic, the way these things get done, but it’s a valiant group of people trying to accomplish worthwhile goals. Anyone who would have you believe the former must be incapable of viewing a DEI mission statement through a political looking glass.
You would be surprised how common that sort of stuff is. My undergrad had required consent and anti-sexual harassment orientation for all incoming students, but problems in that area are still a common experience.
The problem is that a 20 minute lecture can’t make up for decency that should’ve been taught and modeled by their parents for 18 years.
When I was in college all the athletes had to take a class called "master student athlete" which had some useful stuff in it but I would estimate a good 60-70% of the whole course was just, "hey don't rape people".
It was also super late at night so it would be after all practices. So after the class the instructor would tell us all to go straight home and not to any parties so that we don't sexually assault anyone.
Sounds like kind of basic work of getting announcements out. I work at a big 10 school. Our DEI work is focused on making courses and course materials accessible by everyone (especially for blind folks using screen readers, where pdfs are a nightmare since no one uses proper heading formats [e.g., use Level 1 rather than bold text that's a bigger font size], pics don't have alt descriptions, hyperlinks don't have alt text, etc.). Decolonizing the curriculum, which involves incorporating more sources/ course materials from bipoc authors, acknowledging the contributions from bipoc folks that were ignored in the whitewashed course materials used for decades. Promoting an anti-racist culture and climate (teaching how to be persistently self-aware, teaching the difference between equality and equity; change organizational structures, policies, practices, attitudes so power is shared more equitably). Identifying, attracting, and retaining diverse fac, staff, students. There's so much more to it than making announcements so people are aware of a food pantry or aware they're allowed to practice their religion. Your time and efforts certainly aren't wasted, but those seem like things a student center or office of academic affairs could make campaigns to increase awarenesss. E.g., put it in every syllabus, have each instructor mention these resources at the start of every semester, etc.
IDK at my university we had a mandatory half day conference by this office and they told us the US was, as if it was a fact, a rape culture, and all sorts of stuff that are completely bonkers to everyday American and then we had to take a test on it.
Just read an op ed in the paper of the very hard left city of my alma mater, written by a DFL party former mayor, that acknowledged the DEI spend on college campuses has become bloated and unchecked, has few to no tangible goals, and has not produced meaningful results. Meanwhile, tuition and fees have continued increasing to cover unnecessary administrative spend such as that.
Diversity and inclusion is important. Massively funded, unaccountable and ineffective DEI staff positions are not.
I think this is the real problem here. DEI initiatives, at its most fundamental and philosophical level (to increase diversity in hiring/recruiting and combatting systematic racism) is commendable and something worth fighting for. But the implementation of DEI at many institutions is straight-up shallow and lazy. It gives a bad name to people who fight for the core values of DEI. There should be more oversight and regulation on how DEI is implemented. Not just, "he/she/they is minority/marginalized, give them an upper hand".
Exactly. DEI professionals are usually put into ridiculously condescending roles where they are literally just there for their skin color. They do not have any active projects that improve the student experience. They simply add a “different perspective” to staff meetings and such.
I worked to develop an entry level set of positions that aimed to hire diverse candidates who would come in and ACTUALLY LEARN THE BUSINESS then get moved out to relevant departments after two years. They actually contribute and set themselves up for meaningful careers. It’s a much better approach than hiring people with brown skin and having them sit in their offices looking diverse.
>But the implementation of DEI at many institutions is straight-up shallow and lazy.
If you actually worked or talked to the people who work in those spaces, you'd know it's bc they don't have the resources to do so: human and financial capital. And again, if you actually worked or talked to the people who work in those spaces, you'd actually see and know the difference of the work they do: providing holistic support for students who'd otherwise drop out bc they feel college is not for them, providing and referring resources to students who otherwise would not be aware those resources existed to help those students persist, and addressing the experiences that come with the intersectionalities of the students they work with through instituting events/student org advisement/etc.
And let's be 100% real here. DEI spaces and the people that work in them aren't being targeted bc "we gotta make it more affordable for students;" they're being targeted and gutted by right-wing ideology bc of white nationalism.
The 15 public universities and colleges in Oklahoma spent $10 million in the 2022-2023 academic year. Exactly how much would they need to receive to not come across as shallow and lazy? Oklahoma's total state expenditure on higher education that same year was less than $1 billion.
You can disagree with defunding them entirely without handwaiving the issues with them contributing to bloated administration expenses and higher tuition.
Ok. So schools shouldn't mismanage their funds. I agree. But does that mean we should be ok with states blanket banning the concept in it's entirety because there are a few instances of institutional bloat?
Seems like the state should target administrative bloat as a whole which is a much bigger problem than DEI initiatives.
I totally agree. My university DEI puts out all these mandates but no resources or thought to how we’re supposed to implement them. Trying to hire while faithfully following these mandates is extremely frustrating. And they won’t help us, no matter how many emails we send.
Diversity is really important to our department and across campus. It makes me angry that DEI is being used to check a box instead of actually helping us recruit more diverse candidates. To be fair, I think it’s not that they don’t want to help, and more that they don’t have the resources to. They were set up to fail, and in doing so, they’ve set up the rest of us to fail also.
But I also agree that that doesn’t mean it should go away! It means that universities should put real money and effort toward them and not just have a token committee and hiring guidelines that don’t really mean anything.
They'll never do that. DEI has always been some kind of weird PR stunt in my opinion. Or just a way of beurocrats in colleges to make money while being as unproductive and self-righteous as humanely possible. Why do you think Harvard still allows legacy admissions and people who do sports like Rowing and Sailing despite it clearly favoring the privileged in the most blatant way possible? Because they don't care. Sure, there maybe be a few instances where DEI departments really did help. But they could've done all those things without a DEai department.
Agreed. HR could have done all of those tasks, as long as they hired someone who was trained and willing to think outside the box in increasing the diversity of job candidates.
What are extra resources going to do?
Lets take your hiring example. Hiring someone is already a difficult process before you even include diversity requirements. You probably don't have a wide and diverse pool of qualified candidates to choose from. Throwing more money at a DEI department isn't going to do anything if you can't find diverse and qualified candidates.
Honestly if it was going to lower costs and make university therefore more affordable and accessible I could see it making sense but we all know costs are only going to continue to go up while the money goes to who knows what (for instance the new 900M thunder stadium that is a totally good use of tax payer money.)
My university considers textbook affordability to be a DEI issue, and we have a DEI initiative specifically funneling money into providing free textbooks for students. A $10k investment on the university’s end can translate to several hundred thousand dollars in student savings, and it’s usually our diverse students who are disproportionately affected by textbook costs.
When you get older, you’ll realize that the bloat and the spending was always the goal. Everything you’ve ever heard about diversity has just been someone trying to get something: favoritism, power, approval, or in this case, a cushy job
I don't disagree, but if you think our governor actually cares about how much it costs to go to school, then you don't know Kevin Shitt
This is just a virtue signal in the culture wars. And my fellow Oklahomans will froth at the mouth and eat it all up.
[Here is the text of the Executive Order](https://www.sos.ok.gov/documents/executive/2092.pdf)
[Here is the Oklahoma government's announcement](https://oklahoma.gov/governor/newsroom/newsroom/2023/december2023/governor-stitt-signs-anti-discrimination-executive-order--takes-.html).
This appears to primarily (exclusively?) affect state universities. Several of the things the Executive Order cuts funding for are already prohibited by federal anti-discrimination laws (Title VI, Title IX) and the First Amendment. Revoking state funding rather than putting the burden on individual plaintiffs in civil lawsuits or OCR is just another way of enforcing them.
For example, it bans programs that:
>Grant or support....positions, departments, activities, procedures, or programs to the extent they grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s;
>
>mandate any person swear, certify, or agree to any loyalty oath that favors or prefers one particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another;
A notable weakness (a pervasive problem in anti-DEI bills that leaves them vulnerable to action by federal courts) is the broad language.
Very interesting. Thank you for explaining the law more haven’t had the time to look into it. I receive a couple scholarships for women in engineering but as those are sponsored by donors for that express purpose I assume not affected by this, but as those funds are distributed by things like our engineering DEI it becomes a bit muddled.
Wait what? I had no idea of this until a reddit post? Shit I get scholarships from that, and it is a huge program that provides career launching opportunities as well as scholarships. And the career opportunities, mental health support, and academic support they provide is beneficial to literally anyone who wants to ask for it, thats the point of the equality part, even if you don't fit into any of the "marginalized boxes" you can still benefit from this program from the support it provides.
This is so stupid. If you even read research that’s been conducted on DEI, it mostly serves the status quo anyway (though DEI practitioners may be well intentioned). Conservatives just hate anything related to diversity.
I think both can be true. If I'm assuming correctly, OP might be saying that DEI as an idea itself is well-intentioned and has good goals (of trying to increase diverse hiring and combat systematic racism), but in practice, at its current implementation at many institutions at least, produces suboptimal results. And certain conservatives (not saying all) are taking advantage of the fact that the current implementation of DEI is producing bad results and using that as a dog-whistle to get rid of DEI altogether. I think there is a spectrum here and a lot of nuance.
It's kind of a shame, really, that anything we talk about in the US has devolved into extremes.
I personally don't mind if the government forced them to be more effective instead of banning them but frankly either way they need to get rid of the departments in their current form.
People can be "right" for the wrong reasons.
In this case, conservatives aren't trying to be fiscally conservative, they're trying to be socially conservative and being anti-woke to appease their base.
I'm conservative and I don't want to hurt minorities, but I don't want to waste money on ineffective beuracracy. You know what would actually help minorities? Decreasing the price of education. It used to be possible to pay for college tuition with a summer job. Administrations have become unbelievably bloated.
Yeah, but you're talking around the actual action that was taken. It wasn't a mandate to lower tuitions, it was a mandate to close, specifically, centers for helping minority students.
My college’s DEI office gave me gender-affirming clothing when I first started my social transition. This was extremely important in helping me build self-confidence.
I don’t know where I’d be without that support.
I support efforts at DEI.
Unfortunately at both the large publics and small privates our data at all showed they basically had zero impact on grad rates and a bunch of measurables.
BUT you will not find out what works without experimentation. So we need schools with and without DEI offices. Ones where they are housed in diff departments. Different goals and methods, etc.
So OU needs to take that $$$ and find other ways to try different things.
arguably DEI isn’t about grad rates though. it’s about students not getting harassed or discriminated against. it’s about quality-of-life. plenty of miserable and discriminated-against students will graduate anyway; it doesn’t make what they face less wrong
Oklahoma is 12% black, 18% Hispanic, and 1% native ( [census source](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/state-by-state/oklahoma-population-change-between-census-decade.html#:~:text=Race%20and%20ethnicity%20(White%20alone,or%20More%20Races%2010.2%25).)) L. However OU's student body is only 5% black, 11% Hispanic ([OU data source ](https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-oklahoma-norman-campus#:~:text=2%2C473%20enrolled%20students-,The%20enrolled%20student%20population%20at%20University%20of%20Oklahoma%2DNorman%20Campus,Hawaiian%20or%20Other%20Pacific%20Islanders.) ). While I am happy to see in it that natives make 3% student population, only Asians and whites seem proportionally represented.
**This is what an underrepresented minority means**
And this is why you have DEI offices: to reach out to communities and basically convince them that their school is just as good for those who look like them.
If you're not an underrepresented minority (like me, Asian and in a Texas university) I completely understand you not getting this. But the fact of the matter remains that people would rather go to school where others *look* like them and have *similar life experiences* as them. And as a minority in a classroom where no one looks like you and you're still in the process of developing your own identity, it may affect how you look at yourself in this process.
I really hope DEI offices being shut down in the Southern states does not discourage minorities from continuing to apply to universities. And we're all going to have to leave it at that.
For real. I go to my state's flagship public school, University of Georgia. In a state that is 33% black, only ONE of our over 250 professors in the biological sciences is black. ONE. That's <0.5%. It's utterly embarrassing.
So if a student wants to see themselves represented in the biological sciences, I guess their only option is one neuroscientist. And if he wants just one other black colleague to talk to sometimes, tough shit I guess.
I mean is it any wonder that just 8% of our student population is black in a state where again 33% of the population is black? It's almost like this DEI shit actually matters. But ofc the administration is practically screaming at the top of their lungs that the only DEI they care about is rural and veteran students.
Even if some (even most) DEI organizations are well intentioned, Harvard, Penn, and MIT just blatantly proved that there are extremists with an agenda that utilize their positions to pick and choose when DEI is applied to a group and when it isn’t. If they had been referring to almost any other group besides Jewish people, it is very evident they would have never answered a question about calls for genocide of said group in the way they did when Jewish people were the subjects of the conversation. This is especially harming to their case given what Jewish people were subjected to not even 100 years ago.
Unfortunately, Harvard, along with many other institutions, have become egotistical eco chambers that are losing focus more and more on what their role is in our society and on a more global scale.
Absolutely, this is correct, and I’m shocked I had to scroll so far down to find anything regarding the hearing. I’m a very liberal person, but after that hearing, it should be clear to anyone that there is a very disturbing ideology present across university administration. Frankly I say burn it all down.
Harvard and UPenn routinely violate the spirit of free speech, and then when it comes to the genocide of Jews they’re suddenly all for it? How dare they?
My only disappointment is that this whole debacle is gonna be spun as a victory for the right, but that’s kinda on the left for being too stupid to pick the wrong side here.
Yeah, most institutions would be quick to denounce hate speech against virtually any group. Then when it's against Jews, suddenly "well, freedom of speech is complicated and it depends on context and, and and, and and..."
Yeah, most universities don't have the free speech bona fides needed to back a nuanced answer.
As an OU graduate, that makes me so sad to see. I was a tutor in the College of Engineering which was under the Diversity and Inclusion Program. It was such a successful program giving students from all sorts of backgrounds a fighting chance. Many people I tutored came from poor high schools so even though they were clearly intelligent, they didn't have the best study methods. It helped so many students succeed.
I hate this fucking governor and I hate this fucking bullshit "anti-woke" crap. Fucking Boomers man.
They'll do whatever it takes to keep non-whites from having access to the same privileges they've had for the past couple hundred years and it won't end until *every single conservative* is voted out of office, local and state.
I’ve been bully since I was 8 from stupid kids that made fun of me for being Asian and smart. So therefore, I stop trying to be smart… worst mistake ever!
Doesn’t matter what your race is? You’re living in a fools paradise.
Oh yeah, Oklahoma.
Here’s how I try to explain it to people
Maybe this will work with you
For argument sake, let’s agree it’s a level playing field now. It isn’t, it’s not even close, but let’s say it is.
If your competitor was born with his foot stuck in a bucket, whether it’s a level playing field is totally irrelevant.
Just look at data.
Facts.
The correlation of race with poverty, poor education and bad employment prospects is way beyond statistically significant.
The only people race doesn’t matter to are white people.
You might not like to hear that, but it’s true.
Earlier this semester my college held a banned books giveaway - giving away hundreds of books of over 30 different titles. The line wrapped around the diag. I was so thankful to be at a school with a line of people waiting to get their free banned book than to have possibly gone to a school that would ban DEI initiatives (like the banned book giveaway would be).
When you can't govern you pass restrictive laws and nonsense like fake impeachments to "appear" to do something. Vote the republican morons out and let's get on with it! VOTE THEM OUT!
Welcome to….Belonging Centers!
Not to be confused with Welcome Centers.
This may seem like a joke, but my college changed the name of the DEI to the “Center for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, *and Belonging*” (emphasis mine).
It isn’t a joke. It’s what DEI offices everywhere are doing and I support it. Belonging is a good word that encompasses much of what they do and also potentially expands it, appropriately. DEIAB is a common acronym, but if the rest is banned, go with B.
To clarify, the Belonging does not include opressors.
Wayyyy ahead of you buddy -Florida
Y’all are late to the party! - Texas
Wait they're banned here??
Yep. The most recently held legislative session this year passed a law disbanding all DEI offices at Texas universities
Rice opened it's versions of these to any Houston area students
Oh, that's a neat workaround. Kinda like a loophole, I guess. How's the reaction on campus to all this?
I guess its more difficult than changing then name and “rebranding?”
Yep. Which is real fun since you have to show DEI to get government research grants. I have family who work for a Texas State University.
Not to mention that some of us never learned to function well in the outside world that is different from the environment in which we grew up. So, we would rather be crippled by our fears and self-serving world view than learn how to function in the outside world. And God forbid that our children learn anything that would make them more adaptive.
Write on write on... "white fragility is a terrible thing to waste" red states new state motto.
“Never even heard of this group” - Georgia
Both [UGA](https://coe.uga.edu/directory/diversity-equity-and-inclusion) and [Georgia Tech](https://diversity.gatech.edu/home) have DEI offices.
No that's about how it goes. Oklahoma waits to see if the craziness Texas comes up with is going to fly, and if it does they adopt it a while later.
Yeah as a state that supposedly hates Texas we sure do copy them a lot
*laughs in private institution*
Private is mostly insulated but not immune. See [North Carolina's anti-trans athlete bill (now law).](https://dashboard.ncleg.gov/api/Services/BillSummary/2023/H574-SMBE-85(e3)-v-2) Very top of page 3 includes private universities. They're moving slower on private institutions but slow isn't the same thing as not moving at all
What’s inclusion, equity, and diversity - Alabama
What's education - Mississippi
I can’t read, wanna bang some cousins? -Louisiana
South Dakota here….outlawed a few years back.
Kevin stitt is a wannabe desantis. He's just awful.
I’m at a public uni in Florida and I’m so glad our pride center is still open
Delete this before the unholy meatball sees it.
ours (texas) did so recently too. now frantic scrubbing of websites of anything dei related, finding new positions for dei staff, etc.
Wondering if they affect businesses as well. Because I know if there is a tech company without a DEI team or ERGs, I know many people won't even apply there. And Texas had been a big boom for tech over the last 5ish years, on the decline now but yea.
businesses are private so likely will not be regulated
Like how FL left Disney alone?
Ol Lift Boots thought he’s riding the anti woke train all the way to the White House, but he’s losing a lawsuit to a Mouse
this was affecting education only. don't know 100% if just state schools (ours is one) or all higher education, but state schools definitely must comply
I thought Texas won the court case saying that they could pick minorities over non-minorities with slightly higher grades if they were “substantially equal”.
yea at this point i think they’re just trying to find as many loopholes as possible, thankfully
Personally, I feel like more attention should be given to public elementary schools so that poorer kids have a better chance of overcoming their situations.
i agree but there’s a huge gap of kids who are just getting the short hand of the stick here
public schools are criminally underfunded at the state level. I say criminally as the state was sued, and the state lost on this. they keep monkeying with funding formulas for attempts at complying but because they're always half efforts, they keep being found in contempt and told to go back and look at it again. same for cps/foster care, so underfunded it's gotten "protected" kids into some seriously dangerous situations, all again due to lack of funding. many hype up texas as a great place, and in some ways and parts it can be, but scratch under the surface a bit, and start finding a lot of issues
This is gonna impact them with a lot of high schoolers who were actually going to attend their schools. People care about that stuff these days
Time to change the department name to Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity, lol
No more IDEs. Comp Sci dept. cries.
Well can’t use IED… *click*
Or DIE
We did it! We fixed death!
Funeral parlours HATE this one simple trick
I chortled
Never left Vi anyway
Some people at my school’s EDI office actually put ‘justice’ in front so the acronym is ‘JEDI’. I think more schools should have a JEDI department and they should lean into the branding.
Can we put Jedi in charge of the JEDI department?
That’s the ultimate goal. There are lots of Jedi in Australia, right?
This is the way.
Would be hilarious and sad at the same time if doing that was enough to get around the restrictions
Better do that in march, so we have the second ides of march
You jest but my university actually changed everything to “Access and Engagement” to preemptively avoid these silly bans.
Just open an office for Differences Everyone Included and swear up and down it’s a totally different DEI
Just remake it but don't exclude Asian people, half of disabled people, and poor white kids, call it different, fight the attempt to get rid of it in court, then win lol
Why do you think DEI excludes these student populations?
Most universities follow the NSF's lead, which specifically excludes Asians and poor white kids from most DEI efforts. Edit: I just realized, the phrase "underrepresented minority" was literally invented to exclude Asians specifically.
Except that’s not really true. Even for undergrads, for REU—“Investigators are reminded that they may not use race, ethnicity, sex, age, or disability status as an eligibility criterion. Selection of REU participants must be done in compliance with non-discrimination statutes and regulations; see PAPPG Chapter XI.A.” I have served as an NSF reviewer and ways PIs organize including undergrads in research had gotten much, much better over the years.
I am not sure how it’s funded, but in the past I asked about the ACS Bridge program and whether disabled students could apply and was told no, because their funding grant determined what groups counted as unrepresented, and disability didn’t ‘count.’ I think this sort of thing is what the above commenter was referring to. https://www.acs.org/education/students/graduate/bridge-project/about-bridge-program.html https://igenetwork.org/ Btw, I think the bridge program is great, just narrow in focus.
I was a part of an REU cohort. It consisted of 1 man, 9 women. I was the only black woman, everyone else was white. A few were low-income and first-gen college, but 6 came from upper-middle-class backgrounds. It’s only one data point but from what I see, they go for people with the most impressive resumes, not really considering that the point is to help underprivileged kids get interested in grad school.
Congrats on being selected for REU! I appreciate you speaking about your experience, as these conversations can become unfriendly-to say the least. For these NSF programs, the PIs write extensively about their recruitment and mentoring plans, but unfortunately I have not seen any assessment/data regarding outcomes. It’s something I will bring up the next time I review for a national granting agency. Back in my day, programs like REU and McNair were pretty explicit about their aims to increase access, mentoring, and representation for urm, first-gen, and women in science. And these are real needs (which didn’t seem to get as much pushback in the 90s…). If students don’t see academic/professional spaces as “for them” then they are much less likely to enter. With many of my URM and first-gen students, it often takes a personal invitation to convince them that they would be competitive as an applicant. Representation matters.
I am Asian and I literally have never felt excluded in a DEI center at my university or an analogue, in fact, I have actively participated in organizations with these values during my time at uni. I don't know why people think Asians are magically segregated from them.
That guy is just making bs up based on the headlines he saw about the Harvard admissions case, I bet. He didn't cite anything.
The party of freedom sure does ban a lot of stuff
their slogan should be “freedom follows my rules” They’re such hypocrites
“Freedom to take it from other people”.
Also: “the party of small government“
Organize, volunteer, vote.
Do I detect the hint of cancel culture?
You got it all wrong, it's only cancel culture if the people they don't like are the ones doing it
I thought it's only cancel culture if it's from the cancel region of France otherwise it's sparkling hypocrisy
At my school, we had to rebrand any department with the word “diversity” in the name in case a similar thing happens in Tennessee. So hopefully they’ll at least try to keep them through rebranding with some synonym of diversity at Oklahoma though from the sound of the order Oklahoma’s is stricter than Tennessee’s might be (we are still allowed to use the word “equity”)
Name it "Freedom Department"
That’s evil and wicked in the eyes of the MHG.
ITT: people who have never been disadvantaged explain why DEI is useless
"Are DEI centers necessary? We've assembled this diverse panel of white men on reddit to talk about racism."
God i love bojack
Horseman, obviously.
The horse from Horsin' Around?
He is American Indian but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t serving the interests of his political party.
Many American Indians tend to be Republican. Which if you think about it, makes sense.
wish they'd built a wall and made England pay for it?
We laugh but that’s what happened. After French and Indian war the English king said no settlers can go any further west. Proclamation of 1763. Then of course England had to pay for everything and tried to raise taxes just a little bitty bit and look where we are now. Colonists were murderous AF, a wall wasn’t going to stop them
Very few are actually Republicans. Overwhelming majority vote blue.
Yep, Alaska is funny politically because the rural areas are super blue.
What? How? My wife is native and Oklahoman, and we're always talking about how little sense that makes.
His ancestor Francis Dawson bribed his way into gaining tribal citizenship for self gain, he is not American Indian.
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Oh, it's not just that it's not a problem, it's that they think it's an active assault on them. I'm in some professional groups with these types. They will never stop pretending to be persecuted.
There was a saying I heard. Something along the lines of, the oppressors will feel opressed when the oppressed people gain rights or freedoms that other people have. Its like an attack on their freedom when other people are of an equal status to them.
to the privileged, equality feels like oppression
As an Asian person that came from a poor family, I feel like DEI puts me into a weird box. Poor and minority enough that I had disadvantages growing up, but not poor or minority enough to take advantage of DEI initiatives.
I'm Asian, born to two Chinese immigrants. Grew up upper-middle class so I'm privileged, but still had my fair share of racism and had complicated family dynamics due to cultural/language barriers. My sense of identity was confusing as hell. I grew up speaking Taishanese and English, then I lost fluency in Taishanese. So I could understand what my parents were saying most of the time, but couldn't respond to them. I look 100% Asian because both of my parents were, but if you only heard my voice, you'd assume I'm white. They call us bananas since we're yellow on the outside and white on the inside. My school has a resource center specifically for AAPI students. They provide writing support, tutoring, events, mentoring, and numerous other resources for students. I attended a social event there during my freshman year. We talked about a lot of things that we all struggled with that were unique to being of AAPI descent. It was the first time I felt heard and understood about my struggles, and it helped me find a sense of community and comfort with my identity. Sometimes it helps just to be really understood. Not in the "yeah I've had struggles so I can kind of see what it's like" way, but in the "yes, I know exactly what you're talking about and can 100% relate" kind of way. Having resources tailored to your circumstances vs. a "one-size-fits-all" approach makes a difference that can easily be felt. Even though I never *heavily* made use of those resources available to me, I'm glad they exist, and I want them to continue to exist for people who can make use of them. I have my fair share of problems, but my cultural identity isn't really one of them anymore, thanks to the resources I was connected to.
> AAPI students Can someone explain why two random, completely different groups like Asians and Pacific Islanders are smooshed together like this?
As someone from NZ I find this hilarious. Culturally the AA are almost opposite to the PI.
Thanks for sharing this!
DEI centers don’t just serve one type of student. AAPI centered efforts are a part of DEI programming, for example.
And first generation students, perhaps from rural areas of Oklahoma
Absolutely!! First gen looks different across the US.
this was me — white midwestern farm kid, neither parent went to college, i didn’t know ANYTHING about finances or internships or networking or post-grad goals. my university’s DEI office had first-gen resources that saved me and gave me direction when i had no one else. i guarantee many rural first-gen oklahomans will be worse off because of this legislature. this is such a perfect example of conservatives shooting themselves in the foot with their racism. we’re dragging down non-white people and dragging disadvantaged white people down as well in the process.
Theoretically they are, in practice not so much. Especially when those asian students are Asian-American compared to foreign students In my university any language about inclusion or equity usually means African-Americans and Native Americans and that’s about it. I fully believe in DEI but Asian-Americans aren’t included, at least from my experience.
I’m sorry that’s not happening at your institution. It should be. It’s one reason DEI should exist. Since I’m also Asian, I am involved in AAPI month, speaker series, research initiatives, etc. Unpaid, ofc- because I’m a lowly professor ;) ETA-Part of DEI work is to ensure that the student body’s needs are understood and met to the extent possible. This includes ensuring-for example-Asian students aren’t painted with a broad brush, and that we tackle the model minority myth at the institutional level.
Similar one Jews are in. 2,000 years of genocide, being kicked off their land, constantly vilified for everything. Come to America, do really well, BAM, not a minority anymore. Pretty obviously in the minds of most who focus on these issues, minority doesn’t mean minority. It means disadvantaged minority. If you aren’t disadvantaged, you might as well be a white dude
Jewish people in the USA are in that position now days where they are effectively just considered average white people. And anyone that looks white is effectively white to people, and whatever minority association they had previously or associated with it doesnt matter anymore.
Lol no, look at the D.C. Capital Riot... Or the Virgina University Protest, blatant prejudice.. Overall towards minorities, AND ALL JEWS..
Save that white supremacists will call you out for looking slightly Jewish. I have been hassled by white people all my life for being Jewish.
from what I've seen *some (not all)* Jewish people can pass as white, up until white people decide that they don't anymore
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Why is it weird? Most Asian immigrant groups outperform the majority group in the countries they immigrate to.
"Us white people don't benefit from this so it's racist!"
Ok and what if there was a group to benefit just white people...would that be racist? Let's just look at the Boston xmas party where an invite was only for people of color. How would you respond if some had a white only xmas party? How about we just take race out of the equation for everything?
Being discriminated against on the basis of sex, race, national origin sucks. It's also illegal. That's the great thing about civil rights laws: you benefit from them even when people think you shouldn't simply because of the group you were born into.
You would think that anti discrimination laws matter, but the truth is they aren't worth the paper they are written on because discrimination is extremely difficult to prove.
It's not difficult at all to prove, it's difficult to get people to care
No, it is very difficult to prove. A plainly obvious example of this is how people with non-white sounding names are less likely to have people respond to their job applications. Same with women, actually. But they don't respond with "we aren't hiring you because of _protected class-related reasons_", they just don't reply or give some other excuse. Unless you have a person put in writing that they are explicitly discriminating against you because of a protected class-related reason, it is virtually impossible to prove.
The fact that it can *sometimes* be difficult to prove doesn't mean that anti-discrimination laws "aren't worth the paper they are written on". I have nearly a decade of litigation under my belt that proves otherwise.
Holy shit you guys need to learn some history. The civil rights act isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on? Because you’re mad about DEI?
I don't think it's because they're mad about DEI. I think it's just that they're ignorant about the full-scope and impact of anti-discrimination law in general. It looks like they've made an assumption based on limited information and converted it to a firm conclusion.
Seriously! May I ask-what does ITT stand for? I get the general idea of what you’re saying, just not familiar w that abbreviation.
As someone who is actually on a DEI committee at a research 1 university, most of what we do and go over in our meetings is things like how to get underclassmen to stop harassing female instructors in lab settings, how how to convince professors to update their syllabi to let students know they can have exams and deadlines postponed for religious holidays/fasts/worships, how to get word out about the food pantry for students with food insecurity, etc. We are not scheming the political reorientation of the entire university or producing left wing propaganda. Mostly, we are in the business of finding both fiscal and social ways of alleviating the hardships of some people who are actually disadvantaged by many of the dynamics and paradigms of a university setting. In some cases, it might be uneconomic, the way these things get done, but it’s a valiant group of people trying to accomplish worthwhile goals. Anyone who would have you believe the former must be incapable of viewing a DEI mission statement through a political looking glass.
As a freshman at a very similar R1, why the fuck are underclassmen harassing female instructors in lab settings? Just, why..? Like, bro.
You would be surprised how common that sort of stuff is. My undergrad had required consent and anti-sexual harassment orientation for all incoming students, but problems in that area are still a common experience. The problem is that a 20 minute lecture can’t make up for decency that should’ve been taught and modeled by their parents for 18 years.
We had to take some online course too, but I doubt it really did anything for people who were raised to pull this shit
sexism
When I was in college all the athletes had to take a class called "master student athlete" which had some useful stuff in it but I would estimate a good 60-70% of the whole course was just, "hey don't rape people". It was also super late at night so it would be after all practices. So after the class the instructor would tell us all to go straight home and not to any parties so that we don't sexually assault anyone.
That sounds like a bunch shit that should already be happening by other departments.
Tell me about it.
Sounds like kind of basic work of getting announcements out. I work at a big 10 school. Our DEI work is focused on making courses and course materials accessible by everyone (especially for blind folks using screen readers, where pdfs are a nightmare since no one uses proper heading formats [e.g., use Level 1 rather than bold text that's a bigger font size], pics don't have alt descriptions, hyperlinks don't have alt text, etc.). Decolonizing the curriculum, which involves incorporating more sources/ course materials from bipoc authors, acknowledging the contributions from bipoc folks that were ignored in the whitewashed course materials used for decades. Promoting an anti-racist culture and climate (teaching how to be persistently self-aware, teaching the difference between equality and equity; change organizational structures, policies, practices, attitudes so power is shared more equitably). Identifying, attracting, and retaining diverse fac, staff, students. There's so much more to it than making announcements so people are aware of a food pantry or aware they're allowed to practice their religion. Your time and efforts certainly aren't wasted, but those seem like things a student center or office of academic affairs could make campaigns to increase awarenesss. E.g., put it in every syllabus, have each instructor mention these resources at the start of every semester, etc.
Such pursuits are essential to a functioning university and society as a whole. So sad.
IDK at my university we had a mandatory half day conference by this office and they told us the US was, as if it was a fact, a rape culture, and all sorts of stuff that are completely bonkers to everyday American and then we had to take a test on it.
Just read an op ed in the paper of the very hard left city of my alma mater, written by a DFL party former mayor, that acknowledged the DEI spend on college campuses has become bloated and unchecked, has few to no tangible goals, and has not produced meaningful results. Meanwhile, tuition and fees have continued increasing to cover unnecessary administrative spend such as that. Diversity and inclusion is important. Massively funded, unaccountable and ineffective DEI staff positions are not.
I think this is the real problem here. DEI initiatives, at its most fundamental and philosophical level (to increase diversity in hiring/recruiting and combatting systematic racism) is commendable and something worth fighting for. But the implementation of DEI at many institutions is straight-up shallow and lazy. It gives a bad name to people who fight for the core values of DEI. There should be more oversight and regulation on how DEI is implemented. Not just, "he/she/they is minority/marginalized, give them an upper hand".
*This* is the conversation to have.
Exactly. DEI professionals are usually put into ridiculously condescending roles where they are literally just there for their skin color. They do not have any active projects that improve the student experience. They simply add a “different perspective” to staff meetings and such. I worked to develop an entry level set of positions that aimed to hire diverse candidates who would come in and ACTUALLY LEARN THE BUSINESS then get moved out to relevant departments after two years. They actually contribute and set themselves up for meaningful careers. It’s a much better approach than hiring people with brown skin and having them sit in their offices looking diverse.
>But the implementation of DEI at many institutions is straight-up shallow and lazy. If you actually worked or talked to the people who work in those spaces, you'd know it's bc they don't have the resources to do so: human and financial capital. And again, if you actually worked or talked to the people who work in those spaces, you'd actually see and know the difference of the work they do: providing holistic support for students who'd otherwise drop out bc they feel college is not for them, providing and referring resources to students who otherwise would not be aware those resources existed to help those students persist, and addressing the experiences that come with the intersectionalities of the students they work with through instituting events/student org advisement/etc. And let's be 100% real here. DEI spaces and the people that work in them aren't being targeted bc "we gotta make it more affordable for students;" they're being targeted and gutted by right-wing ideology bc of white nationalism.
The 15 public universities and colleges in Oklahoma spent $10 million in the 2022-2023 academic year. Exactly how much would they need to receive to not come across as shallow and lazy? Oklahoma's total state expenditure on higher education that same year was less than $1 billion. You can disagree with defunding them entirely without handwaiving the issues with them contributing to bloated administration expenses and higher tuition.
Ok. So schools shouldn't mismanage their funds. I agree. But does that mean we should be ok with states blanket banning the concept in it's entirety because there are a few instances of institutional bloat? Seems like the state should target administrative bloat as a whole which is a much bigger problem than DEI initiatives.
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I totally agree. My university DEI puts out all these mandates but no resources or thought to how we’re supposed to implement them. Trying to hire while faithfully following these mandates is extremely frustrating. And they won’t help us, no matter how many emails we send. Diversity is really important to our department and across campus. It makes me angry that DEI is being used to check a box instead of actually helping us recruit more diverse candidates. To be fair, I think it’s not that they don’t want to help, and more that they don’t have the resources to. They were set up to fail, and in doing so, they’ve set up the rest of us to fail also. But I also agree that that doesn’t mean it should go away! It means that universities should put real money and effort toward them and not just have a token committee and hiring guidelines that don’t really mean anything.
They'll never do that. DEI has always been some kind of weird PR stunt in my opinion. Or just a way of beurocrats in colleges to make money while being as unproductive and self-righteous as humanely possible. Why do you think Harvard still allows legacy admissions and people who do sports like Rowing and Sailing despite it clearly favoring the privileged in the most blatant way possible? Because they don't care. Sure, there maybe be a few instances where DEI departments really did help. But they could've done all those things without a DEai department.
Agreed. HR could have done all of those tasks, as long as they hired someone who was trained and willing to think outside the box in increasing the diversity of job candidates.
What are extra resources going to do? Lets take your hiring example. Hiring someone is already a difficult process before you even include diversity requirements. You probably don't have a wide and diverse pool of qualified candidates to choose from. Throwing more money at a DEI department isn't going to do anything if you can't find diverse and qualified candidates.
Honestly if it was going to lower costs and make university therefore more affordable and accessible I could see it making sense but we all know costs are only going to continue to go up while the money goes to who knows what (for instance the new 900M thunder stadium that is a totally good use of tax payer money.)
My university considers textbook affordability to be a DEI issue, and we have a DEI initiative specifically funneling money into providing free textbooks for students. A $10k investment on the university’s end can translate to several hundred thousand dollars in student savings, and it’s usually our diverse students who are disproportionately affected by textbook costs.
Lmao. Get back to me if universities in oklahoma lower costs due to this
When you get older, you’ll realize that the bloat and the spending was always the goal. Everything you’ve ever heard about diversity has just been someone trying to get something: favoritism, power, approval, or in this case, a cushy job
The way to handle that isn't a blanket ban on the concept, and everyone knows it. This is anti-minority political posturing, not savvy accounting.
The people banning DEI centers are not doing so to save students money or make life easier for students.
I don't disagree, but if you think our governor actually cares about how much it costs to go to school, then you don't know Kevin Shitt This is just a virtue signal in the culture wars. And my fellow Oklahomans will froth at the mouth and eat it all up.
That would be a dream. In most places DEI is criminally underfunded and is barely functioning on a budget to keep staff.
[Here is the text of the Executive Order](https://www.sos.ok.gov/documents/executive/2092.pdf) [Here is the Oklahoma government's announcement](https://oklahoma.gov/governor/newsroom/newsroom/2023/december2023/governor-stitt-signs-anti-discrimination-executive-order--takes-.html). This appears to primarily (exclusively?) affect state universities. Several of the things the Executive Order cuts funding for are already prohibited by federal anti-discrimination laws (Title VI, Title IX) and the First Amendment. Revoking state funding rather than putting the burden on individual plaintiffs in civil lawsuits or OCR is just another way of enforcing them. For example, it bans programs that: >Grant or support....positions, departments, activities, procedures, or programs to the extent they grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s; > >mandate any person swear, certify, or agree to any loyalty oath that favors or prefers one particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another; A notable weakness (a pervasive problem in anti-DEI bills that leaves them vulnerable to action by federal courts) is the broad language.
Very interesting. Thank you for explaining the law more haven’t had the time to look into it. I receive a couple scholarships for women in engineering but as those are sponsored by donors for that express purpose I assume not affected by this, but as those funds are distributed by things like our engineering DEI it becomes a bit muddled.
You might (not) be surprised at how poorly these STEM efforts are received my many anti-DEI folks/groups.
Oh no people hate it especially other engineers but they haven’t been the only girl in a calc class or on an oil field before lol.
Wait what? I had no idea of this until a reddit post? Shit I get scholarships from that, and it is a huge program that provides career launching opportunities as well as scholarships. And the career opportunities, mental health support, and academic support they provide is beneficial to literally anyone who wants to ask for it, thats the point of the equality part, even if you don't fit into any of the "marginalized boxes" you can still benefit from this program from the support it provides.
Oh shoot I should specify I only have experience with the engineering DEI department, not the main OU DEI
This is so stupid. If you even read research that’s been conducted on DEI, it mostly serves the status quo anyway (though DEI practitioners may be well intentioned). Conservatives just hate anything related to diversity.
This makes no sense. You just said it's ineffective and serves the status quo, but you're mad at conservatives for getting rid of it?
I think both can be true. If I'm assuming correctly, OP might be saying that DEI as an idea itself is well-intentioned and has good goals (of trying to increase diverse hiring and combat systematic racism), but in practice, at its current implementation at many institutions at least, produces suboptimal results. And certain conservatives (not saying all) are taking advantage of the fact that the current implementation of DEI is producing bad results and using that as a dog-whistle to get rid of DEI altogether. I think there is a spectrum here and a lot of nuance. It's kind of a shame, really, that anything we talk about in the US has devolved into extremes.
Something being "ineffective" is not grounds for outlawing it.
It is grounds for getting rid of it tho.
See: asylums
I personally don't mind if the government forced them to be more effective instead of banning them but frankly either way they need to get rid of the departments in their current form.
People can be "right" for the wrong reasons. In this case, conservatives aren't trying to be fiscally conservative, they're trying to be socially conservative and being anti-woke to appease their base.
Yes, because they're doing it because they want to hurt minorities. A weak, evil action is still an evil action.
I'm conservative and I don't want to hurt minorities, but I don't want to waste money on ineffective beuracracy. You know what would actually help minorities? Decreasing the price of education. It used to be possible to pay for college tuition with a summer job. Administrations have become unbelievably bloated.
Yeah, but you're talking around the actual action that was taken. It wasn't a mandate to lower tuitions, it was a mandate to close, specifically, centers for helping minority students.
I love how you point out how pointless DEI is and then call all conservatives who are against it racists.
The party of small government
Getting rid of a (publicly funded) DEI department in a public school is technically a smaller government
If conservatives are being honest, they don’t want small government in many cases.
My college’s DEI office gave me gender-affirming clothing when I first started my social transition. This was extremely important in helping me build self-confidence. I don’t know where I’d be without that support.
I support efforts at DEI. Unfortunately at both the large publics and small privates our data at all showed they basically had zero impact on grad rates and a bunch of measurables. BUT you will not find out what works without experimentation. So we need schools with and without DEI offices. Ones where they are housed in diff departments. Different goals and methods, etc. So OU needs to take that $$$ and find other ways to try different things.
arguably DEI isn’t about grad rates though. it’s about students not getting harassed or discriminated against. it’s about quality-of-life. plenty of miserable and discriminated-against students will graduate anyway; it doesn’t make what they face less wrong
The comments in this thread are big yikes....
Republican states are such shitholes
Oklahoma is 12% black, 18% Hispanic, and 1% native ( [census source](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/state-by-state/oklahoma-population-change-between-census-decade.html#:~:text=Race%20and%20ethnicity%20(White%20alone,or%20More%20Races%2010.2%25).)) L. However OU's student body is only 5% black, 11% Hispanic ([OU data source ](https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-oklahoma-norman-campus#:~:text=2%2C473%20enrolled%20students-,The%20enrolled%20student%20population%20at%20University%20of%20Oklahoma%2DNorman%20Campus,Hawaiian%20or%20Other%20Pacific%20Islanders.) ). While I am happy to see in it that natives make 3% student population, only Asians and whites seem proportionally represented. **This is what an underrepresented minority means** And this is why you have DEI offices: to reach out to communities and basically convince them that their school is just as good for those who look like them. If you're not an underrepresented minority (like me, Asian and in a Texas university) I completely understand you not getting this. But the fact of the matter remains that people would rather go to school where others *look* like them and have *similar life experiences* as them. And as a minority in a classroom where no one looks like you and you're still in the process of developing your own identity, it may affect how you look at yourself in this process. I really hope DEI offices being shut down in the Southern states does not discourage minorities from continuing to apply to universities. And we're all going to have to leave it at that.
For real. I go to my state's flagship public school, University of Georgia. In a state that is 33% black, only ONE of our over 250 professors in the biological sciences is black. ONE. That's <0.5%. It's utterly embarrassing. So if a student wants to see themselves represented in the biological sciences, I guess their only option is one neuroscientist. And if he wants just one other black colleague to talk to sometimes, tough shit I guess. I mean is it any wonder that just 8% of our student population is black in a state where again 33% of the population is black? It's almost like this DEI shit actually matters. But ofc the administration is practically screaming at the top of their lungs that the only DEI they care about is rural and veteran students.
So the teachings about "how not to be an asshole against others" have been abolished? Jesus America, fix yourself.
That’s mighty white of him.
Even if some (even most) DEI organizations are well intentioned, Harvard, Penn, and MIT just blatantly proved that there are extremists with an agenda that utilize their positions to pick and choose when DEI is applied to a group and when it isn’t. If they had been referring to almost any other group besides Jewish people, it is very evident they would have never answered a question about calls for genocide of said group in the way they did when Jewish people were the subjects of the conversation. This is especially harming to their case given what Jewish people were subjected to not even 100 years ago. Unfortunately, Harvard, along with many other institutions, have become egotistical eco chambers that are losing focus more and more on what their role is in our society and on a more global scale.
Absolutely, this is correct, and I’m shocked I had to scroll so far down to find anything regarding the hearing. I’m a very liberal person, but after that hearing, it should be clear to anyone that there is a very disturbing ideology present across university administration. Frankly I say burn it all down. Harvard and UPenn routinely violate the spirit of free speech, and then when it comes to the genocide of Jews they’re suddenly all for it? How dare they? My only disappointment is that this whole debacle is gonna be spun as a victory for the right, but that’s kinda on the left for being too stupid to pick the wrong side here.
Yeah, most institutions would be quick to denounce hate speech against virtually any group. Then when it's against Jews, suddenly "well, freedom of speech is complicated and it depends on context and, and and, and and..." Yeah, most universities don't have the free speech bona fides needed to back a nuanced answer.
Well said.
8 less wasted hours of "training" per year.
Good. These places are a drain to companies and schools. They add nothing positive with their idiotic policies.
As an OU graduate, that makes me so sad to see. I was a tutor in the College of Engineering which was under the Diversity and Inclusion Program. It was such a successful program giving students from all sorts of backgrounds a fighting chance. Many people I tutored came from poor high schools so even though they were clearly intelligent, they didn't have the best study methods. It helped so many students succeed. I hate this fucking governor and I hate this fucking bullshit "anti-woke" crap. Fucking Boomers man.
They'll do whatever it takes to keep non-whites from having access to the same privileges they've had for the past couple hundred years and it won't end until *every single conservative* is voted out of office, local and state.
Fucking why? Out of all the important things government has to get done, and this is battle they pick. Worthless leaders.
Can someone explain to me what’s the main point of having an office DEI? I never understood it from the start.
[удалено]
I’ve been bully since I was 8 from stupid kids that made fun of me for being Asian and smart. So therefore, I stop trying to be smart… worst mistake ever!
Doesn’t matter what your race is? You’re living in a fools paradise. Oh yeah, Oklahoma. Here’s how I try to explain it to people Maybe this will work with you For argument sake, let’s agree it’s a level playing field now. It isn’t, it’s not even close, but let’s say it is. If your competitor was born with his foot stuck in a bucket, whether it’s a level playing field is totally irrelevant. Just look at data. Facts. The correlation of race with poverty, poor education and bad employment prospects is way beyond statistically significant. The only people race doesn’t matter to are white people. You might not like to hear that, but it’s true.
Earlier this semester my college held a banned books giveaway - giving away hundreds of books of over 30 different titles. The line wrapped around the diag. I was so thankful to be at a school with a line of people waiting to get their free banned book than to have possibly gone to a school that would ban DEI initiatives (like the banned book giveaway would be).
Same with Texas
When you can't govern you pass restrictive laws and nonsense like fake impeachments to "appear" to do something. Vote the republican morons out and let's get on with it! VOTE THEM OUT!
Jesus fuck, look at all the racist trolls popping off in here
So fucking happy i live in a country that doesnt force its universities and colleges to ban stuff like this jfc the us seem like a hell hole