President Ted Carter announces changes to DEI programs during University Senate meeting
President Ted Carter announces the changes to two campus offices focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and the elimination of more than a dozen staff positions.
Ohio State University will shutter two campus offices focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and eliminate more than a dozen staff positions as a result of Trump administration directives.
OSU President Ted Carter announced the changes during Thursday afternoon’s University Senate meeting.
“I know the changes we’re sharing today, and those that may come, will likely disappoint many in our campus community, and I understand that,” Carter said. “None of these are taken easily and none of these decisions were made quickly.”
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The public meeting is typically only attended by elected senators and a few other guests. But the auditorium inside Drinko Hall was packed with students, faculty, staff and administrators, including dozens of undergraduate students representing Ohio State’s Black Student Association, the Ohio Student Association and other student-led groups. Some were turned away at the door because there were not enough seats inside.
Three Ohio State DEI offices, 16 staff positions affected by changes
Ohio State’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Center for Belonging and Social Change will have 60 days to sunset its programs and services beginning Friday.
The Office of Institutional Equity, which oversees compliance of areas like Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act, will be renamed the Office of Civil Rights Compliance. That office will continue to receive, investigate and resolve all reports of discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct.
Students with scholarships offered through these offices will not lose their financial aid because of these changes, though there could be adjustments made to eligibility for future applicants. The Morrill Scholarship Program and the Young Scholars Program, two scholarships offered through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, will not be impacted by these changes.
“No student will be disadvantaged by these announcements,” Carter said.
Sixteen professional staff positions between these offices will be eliminated over the next 60 days. Eliminated staff who are interested in other positions at the university will receive help to find new employment. Student employees, however, will not be affected, Carter said.
Staff members were notified earlier in the day about the university’s changes. In a virtual meeting with some Office of Diversity and Inclusion staffers, Ohio State Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda told employees their positions “are risky to defend legally” against federal mandates and state statutes, like Ohio’s controversial higher education legislation Senate Bill 1.
“We can either wait for the bill to pass and respond in a way we can’t control, or we can respond in a way that works best for all of us,” Bellamkonda said. “We are creating new positions that are not as risky and that still support our students, but over the next 30 days we will be reviewing options.”
Carter said the changes announced Thursday are “initial steps” and might not be the last.
“This is not something we initiated, this is something coming from the federal government,” Carter said.
Carter told Ohio State’s Board of Trustees last week that the university anticipated new leadership at the state and federal government would bring changes.
Ohio State launched a webpage to post updates and information on legislative and executive actions at all levels of government that impact the university community. This resource will continue to be updated and currently includes guidance on federally funded research, DEI programs and immigration.
Trump, Yost say Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision applies to all DEI programs
The changes come as a direct result of several mandates from the Trump administration to wipe DEI practices from colleges and universities.
President Donald Trump has signed more than 110 executive actions to date, said Stacy Rastauskas, Ohio State’s vice president for government affairs. It is a number that is historic in both pace and activity, she said.
Carter said that higher education has been “front and center in these conversations in ways we’ve never seen before in our history.”
In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent on Feb. 14, the U.S. Department of Education gave schools an ultimatum: Eliminate “race-based decision-making” from their campuses by the end of the month or risk losing federal funding.
Schools must stop considering race in “decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life,” according to the letter.
The letter’s basis was built on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which overturned the use of race-conscious admissions practices at colleges and universities. Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said the scope of the court’s decision also extends to areas like hiring decisions or awarding financial aid.
Losing federal dollars, Carter said, means the university would “cease to exist.”
Anne Garcia, Ohio State’s general counsel, said Thursday that a group has sued the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the letter infringes on the First Amendment.
“While they are not the law, they are guidance,” Garcia said, as the Office for Civil Rights uses the guidelines to initiate investigations and punish institutions.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost previously agreed with a broader interpretation of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. Days after the decision dropped, Yost sent a memo to Ohio college and university leaders stating that they must adhere to the court’s ruling with “strict scrutiny,” including getting rid of any “disguised race-conscious admissions.” Failure to do so could make them personally liable to litigation, he wrote.
Yost specifically told university general counsels in January 2024 that compliance with the ruling also includes scholarships.
‘A somber day’
Several students, faculty and staff representatives shared their thoughts and concerns about the changes during the meeting.
Angilmarie Rivera Sanchez, a first-year law student and senator with the Inter-Professional Council, said she and other professional students attend Ohio State to prepare for a life of public service. Cultural competency and diversity, she said, are cornerstones of that work.
“How are we expected to help a community we are not allowed to learn about?” she said. “How are we expected to bring in our own unique life experiences, if we are afraid of what repercussions will come from it? How can we as individuals stand by as our neighbors are intentionally targeted by unjust laws?”
Sabrina Durso, president of the Council of Graduate Students, shared results from a recent survey of 617 Ohio State graduate students about their thoughts on the university’s DEI work.
A majority of students surveyed said they feel safe to express their political ideology on campus (73%), feel they are able to pursue their research (80%), and can engage with a wide range of students’ questions and concerns (69%).
On the other hand, graduate students also expressed concern about pending legislation like Ohio SB 1 and its counterpart, House Bill 6. About 87% of participants responded that they would not feel safe to express their political ideology on campus with these updates, and 82% said they would not be able to pursue the research they originally came to OSU to complete.
“Concretely, it is extremely clear that graduate students universitywide do not want to feel the ramifications of HB 6,” Durso said.
Undergraduate Student Government President Bobby McAlpine told attendees that he’d cried multiple times Thursday after hearing the news about the office changes.
“It’s a somber day to be a student at the Ohio State University,” McApline said.
McAlpine expressed hurt, frustration and disappointment at the university’s decision to shutter its DEI offices, spaces on campus that he said he’s found a home in.
“But I come here to tell all of you today that if history teaches us anything, that no matter what decisions are made anywhere, no matter who makes the decisions, the students will remain,” he said.
Faculty and staff members pleaded with Carter and other administrators to communicate more with campus stakeholders about these changes before announcing them.
“Many faculty mentioned a concern about preemptive compliance or over compliance,” said Sara Watson, the University Senate’s faculty council chair. “I think there’s going to be a real mourning of our values and our commitments here.”
As the nearly two-hour-long meeting came to a close, Carter acknowledged the passion and frustration in the room. He told attendees that he know it looks like the university “is somehow being complicit with the General Assembly and Senate Bill 1.”
The university disagrees with the bill and advocated against its precursor, SB 83, Carter said. But the stakes, he said, are too high to wait.
“I am doing everything I can to protect, to make sure that the federal funding we get will still continue because to not do that could have serious, serious implications for us,” Carter said. “To not receive Pell Grant funding at this institution, it would be catastrophic, and that’s what’s on the table right now.”
Though the offices will close, Carter said Ohio State will continue their work in new ways.
“We may have to reimagine how we did some of the work previously in a new way,” he said. “We will find out how to make sure that we continue to make all of our students successful no matter what walk of life they come from.”
After the meeting adjourned, students began chanting on the way out of the auditorium: “When education is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
This story has been updated to include additional information.
Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for Extra Credit, her education newsletter, here.
@sheridan120