Defunding the University of Wyoming’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion might have brought ear-to-ear grins to our state’s far-right senators, but they won’t be smiling when they realize the unintended consequences of their stunt.
Opinion
During ugly budget negotiations, the Senate’s $1.7 million cut to eliminate DEI at UW was accepted by the House. But the chamber didn’t cave on another Senate demand to defund the university’s gender studies program. Legislators shouldn’t play a game of Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo to select what program lives or dies. Both deserved to survive.
DEI offices promote a sense of belonging, foster inclusive learning environments and can improve a student’s chances for success. There are multiple benefits from initiatives that support students with disabilities, veterans with PTSD, minority students and new citizens who may need extra assistance due to language or cultural barriers.
In addition to chopping the limbs off these students’ support structures, it makes no fiscal sense to “save” $1.7 million by closing a DEI office when the Legislature’s own staff estimates UW could lose up to $120 million annually in federal research grants. For proof radical lawmakers don’t care about the consequences of their foolish decisions, consider the more than $1 billion in federal funds the GOP’s legislative leadership threw away in the past decade rather than expand Medicaid.
DEI college offices are the National Republican Party’s new whipping boy this election year. The target was chosen after last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to ban consideration of race from college admissions.
Emboldened by the blow to affirmative action, GOP officials are championing anti-diversity ideas. More than 100 such bills have been passed or introduced in 30 state legislatures since the beginning of 2023, including Florida and Texas.
We’ve long heard Wyomingites are independent thinkers who want to solve their own problems, and other states should mind their own business. If that’s true, why are hard-line conservatives here gladly ready to buy any poison-filled pills more populous states have for sale?
Maybe it’s because Wyoming prefers living in the past. That’s the theory advanced by Sen. Troy McKeown (R-Gillette), who told colleagues they don’t have to embrace the modern ideas DEI college offices offer.
“I had a hat once that said, ‘Welcome to Wyoming, set your clock back 10 years,’” McKeown said. “I really like it.”
Why stop at a mere decade? Many Wyomingites are still partying like it’s 1899, before we passed all those pesky federal and state laws guaranteeing equality for all to protect people from being treated unfairly because of their race, religion, national origin, gender, age or sexual orientation.
Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) said people should look at his alma mater, Harvard University, and examine how it’s gone downhill since opening its DEI office.
“This kind of program was the principal agent of introducing that rot, introducing a faculty that is without diversity of opinion, that is a monolith of wokeness,” Scott said. “We’re seeing this rot affect the University of Wyoming.”
Senator Scott, I realize your 45-year legislative service is the longest in Wyoming’s history, but you and most GOP officials who love to use the word “woke” as a curse against pointy-headed liberals don’t even understand the term.
It simply means to be politically conscious and aware, as in “stay woke.” That makes Scott a monolith of anti-wokeness, which I assure him is not a compliment.
I thought Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne) would be too busy with his top legislative priorities — allowing guns at schools and banning transgender surgeries that aren’t performed in Wyoming — to speak out against DEI. I was wrong.
Bouchard apparently scoured the internet for one of its most loony conspiracy theories: The aviation industry, under pressure to hire more minority workers, did so. What happened? Planes are supposedly falling apart, like the notorious door plug of a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane that blew off mid-flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the side.
Right-wing media immediately called it evidence that companies are more worried about proving they’re woke than they are about safety. In reality, aviation experts have never cited DEI initiatives as a cause of air safety problems. What they point to instead are airplane manufacturers who prioritize saving money and increasing profits.
Every time a politician like Bouchard claims diversity in the workplace causes lower-quality products that may even kill people, the far-right spreads an insidious lie that threatens to tear society apart. Vox’s Fabiola Cineas described it perfectly: “Underneath the attack on DEI are racist, sexist and anti-gay ideas that women, people of color, and those in the LGBTQ+ community do not have the qualifications, skills or intelligence to participate in society through jobs, education, leadership and more.”
McKeown, Scott, Bouchard and the other 17 Republican senators who voted to shut down UW’s DEI office may be celebrating now, but it could backfire and result in unanticipated damage to something they do seem to care about: UW athletics.
UW depends on recruiting talented athletes for the state’s only public four-year university. Successful teams are highly prized by most lawmakers as a tremendous money-maker and source of pride for the entire state. It’s no coincidence Wyoming legislators like to adjourn early at the Capitol so they can head over the hill on basketball game nights. Wins matter, and UW’s budget seems to run into fewer problems when the men’s and women’s teams are on a good run.
Black activists, political leaders and supporters of DEI programs have called out predominantly White universities in states like Florida and Texas that depend on Black student athletes to build championship teams.
“The value Black and other college athletes bring to large universities is unmatched,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote in a letter to the National Collegiate Athletics Association. “If these institutions are unable to completely invest in those athletes, it’s time they take their talents elsewhere.
“Football, in particular, is more than a game,” Johnson added. “It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, with most revenue earned off the backs of Black student-athletes.”
Imagine how this turn of events could work out for UW, which had 37 Black out-of-state football players in 2023. If Black athletes boycott high-powered teams in Texas and Florida, maybe more could find their way to Laramie.
Except, of course, the Legislature just committed the same blunder. By defunding UW’s DEI office, Wyoming threw away any potential recruitment advantage. It could lead to an even less diverse roster than it has now.
It may not matter to legislators who killed DEI. They fired up their political base by doing what comes naturally: treating minority students with disdain, not caring if they feel welcome at UW or given a chance to succeed in any field.
I’d love to see those same politicians squirm in the legislative seats they cherish if a few of Wyoming’s many past star athletes go to the Capitol next year to protest DEI’s demise and call for a boycott. The idea is positively filled with so much wokeness that even some of the sleepy old senators might stay awake and listen for a change.
What an absolute farce of a conclusion. I was a competitive athlete from 5th grade through college in both individual (skiing) and team sports (soccer, rowing), and post-college in an individual sport (skiing). I wasn’t “1st boat” at Cal even though I know my late father made significant donations to Cal Crew, or even though my late father had been the 1960 Olympic 8 coach. My youngest daughter was a competitive athlete (VB libero) for 8 years until Newsom destroyed CA sports in March 2020. Now she powerlifts. Nothing incensed her more than having a lesser player substituted in for her “because she needs playing time”. In Canada and Minnesota, a man is powerlifting in the women’s division and setting records hundreds of pounds more than the best woman. NZ sent a trans-woman (aka a man) to the 2020 Olympics, taking a position away from a woman. in 2023, a trans-woman (aka a man) won the Tour of the Gila bicycle stage race, beating the 2nd place woman.
Never have I seen an athlete express a desire to be on a team or get a higher placing in a race because he or she was some protected or disadvantaged class. No competitive athlete wants to be on a team with a person who made the cut or got the start just because a parent made a big donation to the school/team or because that person was “the coach’s favorite”. Recruiting players for UW based on skin color or some other non-athletic reason poisons the team, as every other player knows why they are there. Did you watch “The Boys in the Boat” movie? The better crew went to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, not the favored-to-win crew or the rich, Ivy League crew.
Anecdotal evidence that cannot be substantiated as true or false. Why should you be believed when experts, current students, employees, and faculty say otherwise?
As a hypothetical, you feel sick and lethargic. 1000 doctors say you don’t have cancer. A couple dozen say you have a rare form of cancer and have weeks to live. Who do you believe?
Having watched committee meetings with Sen Scott, I keep asking myself the question, “Why does he ask questions that were answered decades ago, and didn’t you vote on this?” Time for an age limit-sorry-y’all keep repeating yourselves.
Thank you, Kerry.
You’ve pointed to yet another of the consistent, persistent failures of imagination that characterize the Wyoming Legislature as presently constituted. Legislation is enacted with a “We’ll show you!” frisson, without a thought for its implications.
I know you recall the extreme right wing’s insistence that each adult’s right to refuse scientifically validated vaccination be enshrined in the Wyoming Constitution under the rubric of health care. Now, those same extremists insist, with regard to scientifically validated abortion care, “Oh, we didn’t mean THAT!”
If it were not so deadly, so dim, this failure of imagination, it would be to laugh.
UW has competed successfully in multiple sports over many years……….without an office of DEI……now UW needs one? This is just another example of an expensive solution in search of a problem.
Uh, it already exists. You don’t even know what it does, do you? Be honest.
https://www.uwyo.edu/diversity/index.html
As long as you have reported on the Legislature it should come as no surprise to you that Sen. Scott has never been concerned about the long-term consequences of his legislation. A look back at what he has done to the insurance commission and worker’s compensation over the years should be proof enough. He and his ilk are only focused on the outrage du jour regardless of who their actions impact the rest of Wyoming. They are completely unaware that there are Wyoming citizens outside of their cult.
Whenever I see that Charlie Scott went to Harvard I am amazed at how little he learned there in his 4 years (so very long ago). And reminded of what one of my profs said when I was an undergrad, “Even at Harvard someone has to be at the bottom of the class….”
Excellent article, Kerry. Unfortunately the Far Right members of our legislature are not critical thinkers, including one who reminds us ad nauseam that he attended Harvard. (Apparently Harvard didn’t encourage critical thinking either.) If they were, they would have thought through the long term impact of their blockheaded move. I think the blame also rests with UW President Ed Seidel who avoids controversy at every turn. We didn’t hear him stepping up to defend DEI, but then he was hired by the Board of Trustees with the mandate of “go along to get along”. But that’s another story.
We definitely live in an age where the dumbest rule the smartest. Voting apathy maybe? This also applies to the three clowns that represent us in congress. These kooks support a women grabbing, liar, thief, fraud and worst. You know, the orange menace.
….And your champion is a demented criminal who launders millions of dollars for himself and his family by allowing our borders to be overrun with child, sex, and drug traffickers, weakening our military defenses, draining our strategic oil reserves, allowing signals intelligence and high resolution imagery intelligence to be collected by Chinese low altitude surveillance systems, weaponizing our so-called Department of Justice, and putting a crunch on the life-blood of our high tech’ society, limiting access to affordable proven forms of energy. And other than his twenty-one shell companies, has never run an actual business in his life.
That’s better than electing a ‘man’ that committed a sex crime, a terrible business man that has gone bankrupt 6 times, hobnobs with authoritarian leaders and probably handed them secrets. He lies every day , will say and do anything to get elected and tried to overturn an election. Ya, a real American.
Your diatribe reads like the fox spews chyron.
You repeat lies from the proven dishonest network and other right wing media. Just because you see it on TV doesn’t make it true Mr Koller. Try to do better, if you’re capable.
What exactly are you talking about?
A demented criminal? That’s trump to a T. Projecting a little are you?
No sir, you are wrong. DEI only fosters ignoring serious mental health issues. Just because someone wants to be and says they’re a duck, doesn’t make them so. Supporting that is doing them a disservice.
Tell me you don’t understand DEI without saying you don’t understand DEI.
Quit believing the gullible ol’ party hyperbole. There is not a boogeyman behind everything you don’t understand.