(UPDATED, 11:50 a.m., with details on U of I Faculty Senate resolution in support of DEI programs.)

Soon after the State Board of Education began talking about restricting diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campuses, Nick Koenig and other University of Idaho students began fanning out.

They started collecting student testimonials about the U of I’s Office of Equity and Diversity — and its programs for women, Black and Latino students and LGBTQ students.

“I had sexual trauma resurface causing me to have a panic attack,” wrote one student. “Going to the women’s center, the staff supported me and lent me a shoulder to cry on.”

“These offices were the one place I could be my authentic self. No need to ‘fix’ the way I spoke or to ‘hide’ my accent,” wrote a second student. “If it were not for the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Black/African American Cultural Center, I don’t know if I would have graduated, let alone be pursuing a master’s degree.”

The testimonials aligned with Koenig’s own experience. A doctoral student who teaches climate science and sociology, Koenig moved from Kentucky to Moscow in 2022, after a Zoom call with the former head of the U of I’s LGBTQA office. “It was absolutely the reason I came,” Koenig said last week. “My story is just one of the numerous stories of these kinds of support services and how they operate day to day.”

Koenig has forwarded the 66 student testimonials to the State Board — and to a legislative task force scrutinizing DEI programs. But the State Board is likely to vote next Wednesday on a resolution to limit DEI on campus.

And while the U of I says it is waiting to see what the State Board does, Boise State University and Idaho State University have already reined in their own DEI initiatives. By design, or by coincidence, the two universities are backing away from a showdown with the State Board and the Legislature.

‘… regardless of personal identity characteristics’

The heart of the DEI resolution reads as follows: “Institutions shall ensure that no central office, policy, procedure, or initiative is dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The State Board would carve out a series of exceptions — covering federal research grants, accreditation or NCAA rules, among other items.

Exceptions aside, the State Board resolution would shut down campus centers that have a DEI component. “Institutions shall ensure that all student success centers are dedicated to all students … regardless of personal identity characteristics.”

The proposal has Gov. Brad Little’s blessing. “Little has long supported the idea that all Idahoans be given the same opportunities to succeed,” spokeswoman Joan Varsek said this week. And while the State Board is taking online comments from students through Friday, that doesn’t change the fact that its resolution has political momentum behind it.

If the State Board votes next week, at its last scheduled meeting of the year, the board’s resolution could get out ahead of the Legislature. The Legislature’s DEI task force hasn’t offered any specific proposals yet, and it won’t meet again until the week of Jan. 6, the opening week of the 2025 session.

Meanwhile, Boise State and Idaho State have moved first.

‘This is new territory for us’

Months before the Legislature’s task force began its work — and months before the State Board unveiled its DEI resolution — Boise State administrators began talking about closing its Gender Equity Center and its Student Equity Center.

It’s unclear exactly when Boise State decided to close the centers. But in a Sept. 24 memo to legislative staff, the university’s government affairs team said the closure was a done deal. (The Legislature’s DEI task force held its first meeting on Oct. 23.)

“We’ve been aware of the conversations happening at the state board level and the legislative level,” Jeremiah Shinn, Boise State’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, said in an interview Tuesday. “We wanted to be as proactive as we can.”

The two equity centers — with nine staffers and a combined budget of about $700,000 — closed on Nov. 29. The money will stay in student support programs, but some of the employees are leaving Boise State. “It won’t be the same staff to a person,” Shinn said.

The centerpiece in Boise State’s shift is pretty much what the State Board has in mind: a one-stop shop, the newly opened Student Connections and Success Center.

In their Sept. 24 memo to legislative staff, Boise State said it would gear the new center toward a variety of demographic groups that struggle to stay in school: first-generation students, rural students, low-income students eligible for federal Pell grants, Hispanic students, and male students.

It’s going to look different, but Shinn says he believes Boise State will be able to serve the different needs of all student groups under one roof.

“This is new territory for us and certainly we’ll learn a lot in the coming weeks and semesters,” he said.

On Nov. 14 — one week before the State Board’s first hearing on the DEI resolution — Idaho State President Robert Wagner announced said his university would close its Diversity Resource Center and its Gender Resource Center. Both had operated on campus for 20 years or longer, and had a combined budget of close to $150,000.

The centers’ programs will move into Idaho State’s own one-stop shop, dubbed the Bengal Student Success Center.

Wagner is promising what he calls “a hub for academic growth.” But compliance is at least part of the equation.

“This shift allows us to consolidate efforts and provide more streamlined, impactful support for all students while adhering to state guidelines,” Wagner said in a memo to students and staff.

‘We want to align’ 

For the time being, the U of I’s Office of Equity and Diversity is still intact. That also goes for the programs under its bailiwick: the College Assistance Migrant Program, the Black/African American Cultural Center, the LGBTQA Office, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Women’s Center.

The office has close to 11 full-time staffers and an annual budget exceeding $1.3 million. The Legislature has banned all colleges and universities from using taxpayer funding for DEI programs, so almost all of this $1.3 million comes from student fees.

That status quo is certain to change if the State Board resolution passes. The U of I has a “rough idea” of how it would put all of its student support programs under one umbrella, spokeswoman Jodi Walker said Tuesday. But the U of I wants to wait to see what comes from the State Board, to avoid the upheaval that could come from closing and reopening student centers.

“We want to align,” she said. “We don’t have to do this twice.”

But at the same time, the U of I has been trying to assure the university community that the student programs will not go away.

“Maybe we are going to serve them and support them in ways that look different than what we’ve done in the past, maybe it’s from a different office, maybe it’s from different units, but still trying to meet the needs of students and employees as well,” Provost Torrey Lawrence said at a Faculty Senate meeting last week, according to the Lewiston Tribune.

But that didn’t stop the Faculty Senate from passing a resolution Tuesday “in support of equity and inclusion,” the Tribune reported. “As faculty, we remain committed to current programming offices, and maintaining and extending support to such programs that are devoted to increasing equity, diversity and inclusion on campus,” the resolution reads, in part.

‘Why even exist as an institution?’

Koenig expects the U of I to give in eventually, in order to appease a Legislature that has cut past higher education budgets over DEI.

“It sucks that it’s always the most marginalized that are thrown out first …  to save the bottom line,” Koenig said.

And that might affect Koenig’s future. Koenig, who uses the pronouns they and them, studies tree rings to gauge climate change. Koenig loves Idaho and its limitless forests. But depending on what happens next legislative session, Koenig said they might leave the state.

At this point, the defense of DEI isn’t coming from university leaders — who say they are committed to supporting students of all backgrounds, but who also have to work with the State Board and the Legislature. Instead, that support is bubbling up from the grass roots level.

In the days leading up to their most recent meeting on Dec. 2, members of the legislative task force received a flurry of more than three dozen emails from Idahoans, urging the lawmakers to leave DEI programs alone. The emails — obtained by Idaho Education News, through a public records request — came from current and former U of I students, retired educators and a woman who called herself “a concerned grandmother” of a U of I student. “There are certain programs that benefit my granddaughter, such as the Women’s Center,” she wrote. “These are safe places of support and community.”

The 66 U of I testimonials — collected by Koenig and fellow students — represent a sliver of an enrollment of nearly 12,300. But one pattern emerged from this small sample. If the U of I’s DEI programs go away, three-fourths of the respondents said they would reconsider attending the U of I or supporting their university.

“I definitely wouldn’t want to support a university that doesn’t care for its students and isn’t willing to fight for them,” said one student. “If the university isn’t willing to protect academia then what is it willing to do at all? Why even exist as an institution?”

Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday. Due to the timeliness of the topic, this week’s analysis was published on Wednesday, Dec. 11.