Good news for opponents of DEI in Louisiana! The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has eliminated its Office of Campus Inclusion! Which would be great news if that’s all you knew. Unfortunately, this writer has to read into things, and so this isn’t the big victory folks want (or the giant step backwards others fear).
The Office of Campus Inclusion was a modest office, consisting of two (2) people. These two were reassigned to other departments and likely brought with them whatever projects they were working on already. So nothing’s really changing here, all that really happened is the University is complying with the letter of the federal guidelines but not the spirit.
The question that needs to be asked is this: why was this office needed in the first place? As someone who was heavily involved with extracurriculars, it seemed like all of Student Affairs was drinking the DEI Kool-Aid since at least 2014. The staff of the Student Affairs department had made being a leader in extracurriculars way more of a chore than it should have been. The extra spaces offered in the Union dedicated to student organizations was dominated by pretty much everyone you could fit into the “DEI” category. Part of that can be blamed on a lack of interest by the other groups, but those same groups were generally ignored by or felt antagonized by the leadership in the Student Affairs office.
The Office of Campus Inclusion seems to have been a way to make a couple people feel good about having their own office, or otherwise getting some extra funding from some place channeled to the University. I would think the same would apply to most of these questionable offices. For example, the Office of Sustainability seems to have more people on staff than really necessary to tell students to recycle, or to not cut the grass on a certain part of campus (really).
The goal of eliminating these departments shouldn’t just be removing those three letters out of the public view. All that does is hide the nonsense. What we should be striving for is sweeping changes that reduce the amount low- or non-contributors in our public institutions and the financial burden of supporting them. Let them gain support of the like-minded in the real world and try for a bigger sphere of influence.
Sources:
https://sustainability.louisiana.edu/living-lab/green-infrastructure-masterplan/urban-prairie
Bayou Observant 