It’s back to school season for North Carolina’s public university students, but the institutions students are returning to are different from the ones they left during the summer.
Right after finals, the UNC Board of Governors voted to remove all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies from all 16 UNC schools. The original policy was designed to “advance diversity and to foster an inclusive environment that engages, respects and values all members of the university community and to ensure such efforts are carried out in an effective manner.”
The board opted to create a new policy to replace DEI with one that focuses on “institutional neutrality,” which critics have said leaves historically marginalized students to fend for themselves in an institution built to keep them out.
What exactly is DEI?
DEI has become the latest legislative target for conservatives as at least 85 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in nearly 30 states across the nation. DEI is defined as the practices and initiatives that aim to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, where individuals from different backgrounds and experiences are treated with respect and fairness.
Diversity refers to the presence of differences within a given setting. In the context of DEI policies, this encompasses a wide range of attributes including, but not limited to sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status and cultural backgrounds. The goal of diversity policies is to ensure that these varied perspectives are represented and respected within the organization.
Equity involves the fair treatment, access and opportunity for all individuals, while striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have historically led to the unfair treatment of marginalized groups. Unlike equality — which provides the same resources and opportunities to everyone — equity takes into account the different needs and circumstances of individuals.
Inclusion is the practice of creating environments in which any individual or group will feel welcomed, respected, supported and valued to fully participate. An inclusive organization actively works to ensure that all employees, regardless of their diverse backgrounds, feel they are an integral part of the organization’s dynamics.
DEI encompasses people of different ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, disabilities, genders, religions, cultures and sexual orientations. Initiatives within the DEI umbrella often will provide opportunities for groups who have historically been discriminated against. This can include, but is not limited to: members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of Color, people over the age of 65, indigenous people, those who practice religions other than Christianity, such as Judaism or Islam and veterans.
On a broader scale, DEI policies can contribute to social change by promoting equality and justice within the community. Organizations that prioritize DEI can serve as role models, encouraging other entities to adopt similar practices. This can help reduce societal inequalities and foster a more inclusive community.
What have universities done?
Appalachian State University was among the first of North Carolina’s public universities to close its DEI offices and eliminate the Chief Diversity Officer position from the chancellor’s cabinet. According to Megan Hayes, a spokesperson for the university, there were four employees “solely dedicated to DEI work.” Two of those employees were allocated to new positions, including the former Chief Diversity Officer.
East Carolina University (ECU) moved all personnel-related units under one department before the Board of Governors’ vote: Department for People Operations, Success, and Opportunity.
“Achieving our goals of increasing utilization of well-being resources, sustaining an inclusive environment, and supporting employees throughout their career journeys requires us to broadly examine our structures and practices,” the university said in a March statement announcing the consolidation.
Over at NC State, Provost Warwick Arden announced the DEI office would be renamed to “Office of Equal Opportunity. In addition, the African-American Cultural Center, the LGBTQ Pride Center, Multicultural Student Affairs and the Women’s Center will move to the university’s student affairs department. The Disability Resource Center will remain with the equal opportunity office.
UNC-Chapel Hill has removed mentions of DEI from its webpages, according to reporting from WUNC. Kevin Best, a university spokesperson, told the same news outlet UNC-Chapel Hill is “focused on building a welcoming environment that maintains our commitment to institutional neutrality and the equality of opportunity for every member of our community.”
In Charlotte, UNCC has completely shut down its DEI office, according to reporting from The Charlotte Observer. The school’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Office of Identity, Equity and Engagement and the Office of Academic Diversity and Inclusion were eliminated and all 11 employees were relocated to different departments.
Student newspaper The Niner Times recently published a story that surveyed LGBTQ+ students about their feelings the environment for queer and trans students at UNCC, ad how supportive or lacking it is.
At the time of the survey, respondents mostly felt comfortable expressing their identity with other students (62.75%). Around the same amount of respondents felt comfortable expressing themselves outwardly on campus (58.82%) and two thirds of respondents felt safe at UNC Charlotte (66.67%).
Students shared while they did feel safe expressing themselves in the current moment, they are worried about where the future will take the university.
“UNC Charlotte has been an amazing, safe space for my queer friends and myself. I feel that I can be free here,” said a first-year student respondent. “That said, I worry about the future of our safe space; we’ve gotten caught in the crossfire of a culture war that we didn’t choose. The state hasn’t given me reason to believe it has our best interests at heart.”
With the news of DEI initiatives being removed from campus, queer students have continued to voice their concerns about what the fate of inclusive spaces and programs on campus will be.
“Being queer at UNCC was a love-hate relationship,” said an alumni respondent. “The queer community was loving and accepting, but so many other communities (clubs, student orgs, teachers, programs, etc.) weren’t. We had to create our own resources, and now that the new DEI legislature has passed, the spaces queer students and faculty have worked so hard to create will likely be defunded and eventually closed or changed.”
What people are saying about DEI
UNC System President Peter Hans spoke at the board meeting where the vote barring DEI took place saying, “it is not the job of the university to decide all the complex and multi-dimensional questions of how to balance and interpret identity.” However, it IS the universities’ responsibility to ensure all students are set up for success throughout their academic careers and beyond.
Students have continued to be in the crosshairs of campus culture wars, something The Niner Times Editor-in-Chief Davis Cuffe and his staff are working to navigate.
“It’s been insane,” Cuffe explained in a sit-down interview with Qnotes. “We spent over 97 hours covering the [pro-Palestinian] encampment, and in that same week, we had DEI protests going on.”
On the day the Board of Trustees revealed the plan to eliminate DEI, Cuffe recounted how he and his staff came into the newsroom at 7 a.m. and didn’t “clock out” until nearly 1 a.m. that night.
Then, they had to drive to Raleigh a few weeks later to report on the Board of Governors meeting.
“We spent nearly two days in Raleigh covering that,” Cuffe recounted. “We weren’t sleeping … we were looking at our Google Docs for hours at a time, working to report on what was going on for our students who depend on us.”
Something Cuffe noticed as he continued to report on the UNC DEI situation was just how diverse his school was — and in turn, how the elimination of these policies appear to contradict the makeup and mission of the university.
“I don’t want to speak for any campus groups or other people, but it kind of goes against what we are as a campus — a very diverse and culturally rich group,” Cuffe said.
Some of Cuffe’s own staff are students who’ve benefited from DEI programs and initiatives, and he said for those student journalists, covering these issues has been an even bigger challenge.
“We’re a diverse group, and we’re a really close group … We all want the well being of each other and seeing stuff that maybe goes against their values … people come to me and talk, and it’s been difficult for some people,” Cuffe explained. “I’m a straight, white guy, so I’m not directly affected by a lot of this stuff, but it’s still alarming to see the disregard for some of these students who are my colleagues, my friends.”
There is an apparent disconnect between a majority of the university students in the state and the conservative Board of Governors, according to Cuffe. In the case of UNCC, the student body tends to lean more towards liberal philosophies while the body in charge of creating university policy is the complete opposite.
Whether the issue was protesting for the university to divest from Israeli supporting companies and weapons manufacturers to advocating for DEI efforts to remain on campus, it was clear to Cuffe and his staff there’s a bridge missing between the two entities.
“From the students we’ve talked to, they’re a little disappointed [about] the lack of response, even with the Palestine protests and now with the DEI stuff,” he said. “I think people are just confused and they’re concerned because there’s a huge change coming that could potentially affect them. There hasn’t been any clarification or news about what that could be … we’ve just been left in the dark.”