An Alabama bill that impacts college DEI programs, bathroom access has been in effect across the Yellowhammer State for about a week. The SB129 legislation went into effect on Oct. 1.
Under the bill signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in March, DEI is defined as classes, training, programs and events where attendance is based on a person’s race, sex, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin or sexual orientation.
The law prohibits public universities, K-12 school systems and state agencies in Alabama from maintaining DEI offices. However, it’s unclear how much the law will impact the outreach and support functions previously performed by DEI offices.
At The University of Alabama (UA) in Tuscaloosa, a queer resource center called Safe Zone was shuttered under the new law.
Safe Zone had a full-time staff position along with a number of paid positions held by students, said Alex House, the associate director of communications at UA.
Safe Zone used university funding to provide educational services and counseling to queer students and acted as a liaison between students and the administration.
Queer Student Association president Bryce Schottelkotte, 21, said back in August that as much as she would like to replace the services that were previously offered by Safe Zone, she feels very limited as the uncompensated head of a student organization.
“I’m a senior student who is trying to get my degree and pay my rent and make my money,” Schottelkotte said earlier this year. “I care very much about QSA, but I just don’t have the time or ability to focus every single thing in my day on QSA.”
Both the Queer Student Association and the Black Student Union are still free to reserve meeting rooms on campus that are available to all student groups, but neither group will receive any designated resources from the school.
In July, three University of Alabama System campuses shuttered diversity, equity and inclusion offices— and opened new offices that did not have specific mandates including diversity.
“My administration has and will continue to value Alabama’s rich diversity, however, I refuse to allow a few bad actors on college campuses – or wherever else for that matter – to go under the acronym of DEI, using taxpayer funds, to push their liberal political movement counter to what the majority of Alabamians believe,” Ivey said in a statement released when she signed the bill in March.
Similar initiatives from both Republican legislatures and university school boards have taken aim at DEI on college campuses across the country.
A decades-old Black student organization at the University of Missouri was forced to strip some longstanding traditions of explicit references to race.
The University of Florida in Gainesville axed its diversity and inclusion offices, letting 13 staff members go and removing appointments to the diversity office for 15 faculty members.
Faculty at the University of North Carolina’s flagship school have expressed apprehension about what recent changes to diversity policy means for curriculum and future students.
