James Renton said he gets why some Kentucky lawmakers and others want to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion policies at public universities like Northern Kentucky University, his alma mater.
“I grew up in a conservative town and I can understand personally that change is very difficult, especially for people who were raised with certain ideologies – especially when it comes to LGBTQ issues,” Renton told LINK nky.
He also thinks change is possible.
The NKU senior music education major saw it happen with Friends of Dorothy, an NKU student organization Renton describes as “an organization of non-women attracted to non-women.” He joined the group after arriving on campus as a freshman in 2020. He is now its outgoing president.
“It was then a group for gay men,” Renton said. “It became a safe space for me, especially during COVID. We were all locked down and there was barely anything going on socially. Over time we evolved our description for our organization,” opening it up to those identifying as non-women attracted to non-women.
That “safe space” may not exist, Renton told LINK, if the 2024 Kentucky General Assembly passes legislation commonly referred to as anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) this spring.
Lawmakers are mulling two bills currently that opponents say could unravel, DEI at the state’s public colleges and universities. Both were filed months following a June 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled affirmative action admissions unconstitutional at two universities, including Harvard.
Although DEI is not necessarily synonymous with affirmative action, the SCOTUS ruling has been followed by anti-DEI legislation in states like Florida and Kentucky. Just last week, the University of Florida eliminated its diversity office in a move that some say is tied to a state law passed last year banning race and gender from being considered in postsecondary decisions.
More Florida public colleges and universities are expected to follow suit.
Businesses, too, have been reconsidering DEI policies in recent months, with companies like Zoom scaling back teams. Public postsecondary institutions, however, would be primarily impacted by the DEI bills pending in Frankfort.
Those bills are Senate Bill 6 and House Bill 9. SB 6 is the only one to get a vote so far this session, passing the Senate 26-7 along party lines in February.
Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson (R-Bowling Green) is the sponsor of that bill, which would prohibit public colleges and universities from teaching any of 16 spelled-out “discriminatory concepts” on race or gender as fact in the classroom. It would also outlaw hiring or admitting students based on what it calls “specific ideologies,” and require diversity officers to spend at least 50% of their time helping students qualify for federal need-based Pell Grants.
“I offer SB 6 to counter a trend in higher education of universities attempting to exclude from employment, or deny promotion to, scholars and professors who do not conform to the liberal ideologies now fashionable in public universities,” Wilson said after Senate passage last month.
NKU Faculty Senate President John Farrar, Ph.D., an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the university, addressed the Pell Grant language, and other SB 6 provisions, in an email to LINK.
SB 6 would not only have “the potential to severely curtail academic freedom in the classroom,” Farrar said, but would make it harder for faculty to support “ALL students on campus through the graduation. No university labels students by how they pay. I don’t know, want to know, or need to know whether my students are Pell eligible. Yet, an ‘individual whose primary duties include diversity initiatives’ is required to spend 50% of their time serving Pell-eligible students.”
“NKU will comply with the law, but this provision will be very arduous to implement,” Farrar said. “The institution will survive, but we’ll be damaged if this passes.”
Neither SB 6 of HB 9 would be good for organizations like Friends of Dorothy, Renton said – but he told LINK he thinks HB 9 is worse.
The 33-page bill Rep. Jennifer Decker (R-Waddy) sponsored in January spells out specific prohibitions against hiring, contracting (“or other transactions”), and against admitting students based on “religion, race, sex, color or national origin.” Funding of DEI offices or training would largely be prohibited, and certain academic research areas impacted.
Public colleges and universities would also be banned under HB 9 from giving course credit tied to diversity, equity or inclusion concepts, among other activities.
Friends of Dorothy may have more “wiggle room” with SB 6, Renton told LINK, but not with HB 9. He said the organization would probably have to disband under Decker’s bill – primarily because Friends of Dorothy is a registered student organization on the campus of NKU, a state-funded university.
The organization has also received money from NKU in the past for special events like “Dine with Dorothy,” a food event open to anyone on campus that NKU funds with about $350 for food supplies, Renton said.
“We understand if we’re taking up space (on campus), we need to be able to serve,” he said. “This is a community.”
Farrar also seems most concerned about HB 9, which he told LINK “will harm all of our students.”
“While purporting to support ‘intellectual diversity and viewpoint diversity,’ the bill establishes penalties for certain viewpoints,” Farrar told LINK in his email. “It doesn’t seem that gender studies, women’s studies, or race studies courses would be formally banned, but the teaching of these subjects would likely be severely curtailed, despite supposed carve-outs for course content and academic freedom for similar reasons as SB6. Student organizations aren’t safe either because the bill prohibits the use of ‘resources’ on DEI initiatives.”
So far HB 9 hasn’t been heard in committee. It has, however, been assigned to the House Education committee, which could schedule a hearing on the bill at some point this session. There is little more than a month left to pass the bills into law.
At his Team Kentucky update Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear said he will veto the bills if they reach his desk. But he also acknowledged the Senate and House — each with Republican supermajorities — may have the votes to easily revive either bill.
“My hope is that the General Assembly doesn’t pass either of them,” Beshear said. “If they get to me I’ll veto them. And even if that veto is overridden, I hope those college students and others know they’ve got somebody here in Frankfort who believes diversity’s a good thing. Diversity is and should always be an asset. It’s the reason we were number one last year in increasing the number of Kentuckians entering higher education.”
Renton recently sent a mass email to every member of the Kentucky General Assembly that included a campus petition against the anti-DEI bills.
“But none of them have reached back out,” Renton said.
He said he’s concerned lawmakers may pass the bills “in a dead-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of deal.”
While he waits for a response from lawmakers, Renton is finishing his education degree at NKU. He is also continuing to support the “safe space” Friends of Dorothy is for him and others.
“I truly believe in our mission,” he said.