Gordon spares university’s DEI efforts
With the governor’s signature on the state budget bill, UW is set to keep its diversity programs, if not its office. It also won significant funding for nuclear, coal and porous media research.
The University of Wyoming got much of what it asked for in the state budget this legislative session. Gov. Mark Gordon signed the budget bill Saturday, finalizing the next two years of appropriations to UW and every other state agency.
Between its standard budget and the various exception requests approved by both lawmakers and the governor, UW’s portion of the state budget comes to about $504 million.
The governor scratched in just one line-item veto when it came to the university’s budget, canceling part of a footnote that would have forbidden UW from spending state funds on an Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or on any programs or activities with related goals.
“I recognize the will of the Legislature on this topic and do not seek to undermine it,” Gordon writes in a letter explaining his line-item vetoes. “Nevertheless, I also believe that without this targeted veto, the legislature will have inadvertently put millions of dollars of federal grants that regularly flow to the University at risk.”
The governor left the provision banning the DEI Office intact, but he vetoed the line forbidding UW from spending state funds on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts more generally.
The news came as a relief to the university community, which had gathered last week during a Board of Trustees meeting to show its support for DEI programming.
“All in all, it was a successful session for UW, with the Legislature and the governor continuing their strong support for the state’s university,” President Ed Seidel writes in a message to campus.
That “strong support” includes $61 million for major maintenance, $12 million for endowment matching, $23 million for the School of Energy Resources and up to $25 million to match private donations for research conducted at the High Bay Research Facility.
Other funds support new AI research, stipend increases for graduate assistants, classroom technology upgrades and mental health services.
The biennium budget dictates how state funds will be dispersed — and how they can be spent — for the next two years.
UW diversity efforts, programs on the hot seat
The footnote axing UW’s DEI Office was one of two budget amendments this session aimed at alleviating right-wing concerns that university students are being indoctrinated with leftist ideologies.
The Wyoming Senate passed both footnotes, one banning DEI, another banning gender studies courses. While both footnotes were included in the Senate’s budget bill, neither were included in the House’s. During the conference phase, when lawmakers from both chambers hammer out differences between the two versions of the state budget, the gender studies prohibition was removed. The DEI prohibition was not.
To be clear, the DEI footnote only forbade UW from spending state funds on the DEI Office or related programs. It did not forbid UW from having a DEI Office funded through other sources.
Still, the message was clear: Cheyenne did not approve of UW’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — nor, seemingly, its wider efforts to be more diverse, equitable or inclusive.
During the UW Board of Trustees meeting last week, an “extraordinary” turnout of more than 100 students, faculty and staff showed up to voice their support for the DEI Office, its efforts and the various other programs around campus that shared its goals.
The trustees and President Seidel voiced their own support for the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at UW. The office serves a number of crucial functions — such as maintaining federal compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act — as well as administering a number of other programs important for student success or for recruitment and retention.
The potential loss of federal compliance, and the associated loss of grants, was the main justification Gordon cited in his decision to veto part of the DEI footnote.
“These grants are vital to research and other core purposes of the University, but with the condition that the recipients extend opportunities to participate to underrepresented and underserved populations, including veterans, people with disabilities, Native Americans, and others,” he writes in his veto letter. “These grant-required inclusion efforts are much broader than LBGTQ+ or others that our Legislature may believe are the only populations for which inclusion efforts are intended.”
Lawmakers, especially those senators who voted for the footnote axing DEI, did not seem to understand what UW’s diversity office actually does.
During their discussion on the footnote, one senator called the DEI Office a “monolith of wokeness,” while another baselessly blamed DEI efforts more generally for recent airplane failures. Albany County Sen. Chris Rothfuss (SD-9), who teaches at UW, explained that the DEI Office is just as much about making campus safe and welcoming for disabled, first-generation or rural students as it is about making campus safe and welcoming for non-white or LGBTQ+ students.
Rothfuss’ explanations didn’t appear to make a difference to his colleagues, who passed the footnote over his and others’ objections.
In his veto letter, Gordon made clear that he is sympathetic to the senate majority’s concerns about the ideology allegedly being pushed by UW’s DEI Office.
“Clearly Wyoming need not pursue any ‘woke’ agenda and I have encouraged the University to drop such nonsense,” he writes.
DEI efforts generally have been spared. But UW still finds itself in a tough spot, its leadership sensing that the status quo is too precarious to stand as-is.
“We are now considering how to manage this situation,” Seidel writes in a message to campus. “There are some student success, access and community engagement functions we will need to continue, so as to not jeopardize federal funding for research and other programs.”
Beyond that — and consistent with what the president and trustees communicated to campus last week — UW is also seeking to keep the DEI programs geared toward student success or recruitment.
“We certainly will continue to value and serve students, employees and community members of all genders, ethnicities and backgrounds, and work to make everyone feel welcome,” Seidel writes. “But the message from lawmakers, regardless of the welcomed line-item veto from the Governor, is that our DEI efforts must change, and discussions are underway to determine the best path forward.”
To this end, the university will establish a working group of faculty, students and staff to reexamine all of UW’s DEI activities and “consider which can and should be continued; and explore how funding sources other than state appropriations can potentially be deployed to support some essential functions.”
The president’s message concludes by noting that more information on this working group will be forthcoming.
What happened this session
UW’s initial list of requests, submitted to the governor last year, carried an even larger price tag. The governor cut down some of those requests before submitting his own recommendations to the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee — the collection of lawmakers who get to take a first crack at the state budget.
The appropriations committee put many of the university’s requests back into the budget, occasionally overriding the governor, who had advocated giving the university less. However, significantly, the appropriations committee cut down a request for matching funds for porous media research from $75 million to $25 million.
The committee’s final recommendations were largely respected by the rest of the legislature throughout the 2024 Budget Session, as each chamber debated and amended UW’s portion of the state budget.
There were notable changes, however. UW’s budget was increased by $2.5 million to support rangeland management research and education. But UW’s budget was then decreased by $1.7 million to defund the Office of DEI.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated Gov. Gordon had spared the DEI Office itself. This is not correct. The line-item veto only affects DEI efforts more generally. The language axing the DEI Office specifically is still part of the budget.
Regarding footnote 12 on DEI, Governor Gordon only vetoed part of it: "or any diversity, equity and inclusion program, activity, or function." He did not veto the part banning the appropriations to the UW DEI office. I think your article gives him more credit than he is due for saving it. The university will still have to find a different source of funding for the office.