“DEIA”, “DEIB”, and “Affirmative Action” are programs intended to secure needed funding and support for vulnerable minority groups. Everyone on K-State’s campus benefits from these programs, from cultural exposure to accessing accommodations at the Student Access Center. Other organizations like the Social Justice Alliance and KAWSE depend on funding from university departments to provide needed support to minority students.
In January, Trump declared war on these last threads of protection minorities receive from our schools through Executive Orders aimed at defunding schools that support “DEI” (whatever he thinks that means). The Kansas legislature has followed this up with explicit budget adjustments to ban DEI programs at schools and universities. YAF, a far-right political organization on campus, has pushed to end these programs on our campus.
The K-State administration has so far renamed and dissolved departments quietly across campus. KU dissolved most of theirs loudly despite student protests. So, what can we do to protect our minority students when our administration fails to? How can we prevent the last few shreds of protection our minorities on campus have against fascist violence?
First, let’s understand the origins of the situation that initially led people to develop DEI. In 1953, the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, which said that schools should move towards integration “with all deliberate speed.” Within the decade, southern senators were signing onto the “Southern Manifesto,” which was a commitment to uphold white supremacy.
In the following decades, multiple court cases made several integration methods “unconstitutional.” Largely segregated school districts around the country turned to what would be termed “forced busing.” This practice was a kind of exchange program, where some white and black children were sent to schools outside their neighborhood in order to integrate. However, this practice was struck down by the Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley, leaving schools with no practical way to integrate.
Affirmative action, the practice of taking a student's racial background into account during enrollment, was also used to help integrate schools, but that was also struck down by the courts only a few years ago. The badges and incidents of slavery have been made to stand unchallenged.
In this tradition, DEI is another attempt to create a more equitable society by offering help to those who need it. DEI puts the needs of many different groups together, which has strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, grouping people with similar struggles together could create solidarity between those groups. On the other hand, it means that the whole bucket can be tossed out without affecting the rest of the university because it hasn't been integrated into the whole.
Take, for example, the Student Access Center. To get accommodations, students must register and provide official documentation, and only then will they be allowed a small range of accommodations. Why are professors not instead taught across the board to allow various accommodations as standard? Some professors do this–they have flexible deadlines, movable exams, or are open to negotiation. Other professors, generally outside of the humanities, have strange ideas about making students suffer. Instead of upending the notion that students have to put their nose to the grindstone and creating a more welcoming environment, the university has created another layer of legislative process for students who already need help to go through. Though the goal of DEI is good, the methods are fundamentally liberal because they accept the system as is and only ever advocate for incremental, slow, and ineffective changes.
However, with Trump’s executive orders, universities are considering full compliance or possibly having their funding cut off. The system by which universities will be investigated and punished, and the timeline we have to respond, is unclear. Worse, the earlier these institutions fold, the easier it is for the Trump administration to take over. For example, the University of Kansas collapsed all three of its DEI centers into one. They took down DEI-related web pages and stopped their gender-diverse housing policies, despite strong protests from hundreds of students.
Where does this leave K-State students? Our administration is not flexible and does not have the backbone to challenge authority. So, K-State students are left where they were before these programs came into being–alone. If you get accommodations from the Student Access Center, if you have attended an event for the Multicultural Student Center, if you have ever received food from Cat’s Cupboard, all of these things are on the chopping block.
One student, who preferred to remain anonymous, said their academic performance will be impacted because we all need access and opportunities in the classroom to succeed. These programs were intended to make sure students who enter college can finish their degrees to the best of their abilities, whether they are a first-gen student, a racial minority, or a woman. However, the conservative government would like the demographic of people who graduate from college to look like it did in 1950.
College degrees are explicitly tied to our ability to survive in this economy. They increase earning potential, and in our capitalist society, how much money you make is tied to your power. Think back to when women could not enter the workforce. They had difficulties leaving abusive relationships and were left out of politics. They were dehumanized with even higher rates of unresolved assault cases because they did not receive political consideration.
Black people in America were structurally denied housing and college degrees for so long that most black families today remember being denied loans and degrees for the color of their skin. Now they disproportionately make up the most poor and disenfranchised. Disabled and queer folks have faced similar difficulties maintaining jobs because of their status which puts them between not making enough to survive and making too much to receive assistance.
The official line of the K-State administration is that they “will follow the law.” It barely needs to be said that this is not a stance that will protect our students. The changes, however, are coming quicker than originally anticipated. Some students and student groups, organized by the library ambassadors, have compiled a petition to ensure every student is updated when anything on the K-State website changes. K-State Admin brushed them off by pointing them towards a hard-to-find page on the website that vaguely details the changes the administration is making.
These changes to wording are being implemented across the board. Funding which targets “women”, a category that conservatives are sure exists when they speak about sports, is being generalized. Some scholarships cannot legally be changed due to the lack of descendants, so those funding sources might disappear altogether, or be even harder to find. These wording changes will not be the end of the line. The Young American for Freedom Has filed a civil rights complaint, essentially snitching on various university jobs and departments that have renamed themselves to comply with the letter of the law, as well as complaining about alleged “discrimination.” They will not stop until there is no one but white male business majors attending K-State.
Student senator Holzmeister has proclaimed himself “DOGE of Kansas State.” His bill to institute more roadblocks in the path of funding for underrepresented student orgs has failed this semester due to a filing error, but the YDSA and our allies will be ready for any attempt to revive this project in the fall semester.
This is not the end of the road for social progress. We can join together as students and demand that the university reject patently unconstitutional restrictions. There are more of us than them. There are more students than spineless administrators. Fortunately, there is already an organization at K-State dedicated to improving the lives of students and challenging the administration. We are the most active political group on campus, and you can follow us on Instagram @kstateydsa to learn how you can get involved. We provide the training and support needed to challenge administration and the legislature with pointed critique and lessons on making real change. Our efforts must be more than waiting for the next president. The only people who will save us are ourselves.
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