OPINION: Student Fees Shouldn't Pay For New Diversity Director, Center

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr)

This week, I confirmed that the new Director of Student Diversity & Inclusion as well as the accompanying new Center for Unity both will receive their funding from The Student Services Fee. It is inappropriate for these to receive student funding because their content will be an issue of conscience for some students, because their inception appears to be an extension of administrative, rather than a student, interest, and because administrators should not rely on their own funding rather than students'. For these reasons, UT-Tyler administration should forfeit its use of student services fee money for these activities immediately.

As of this essay’s publication, I do not yet have the full story of how the funding arrangement came about, so I will tread lightly and say that the administration’s activity would be inappropriate. However, should this prove to be willful acquisition of student services fee money to an administrative agenda, namely the expansion of DEI programming, then I will have more to say later. For now, I will wait and merely outline that funding these cost centers with student money is simply inappropriate.

Student Services

Now, what is The Student Services Fee? This is the fee that the Education Code allows The Board of Regents to collect from students to fund activities like the debate club, intramurals and artist of lecture series. This fee is common among universities to try to enrich student life through subsidized programs. A student committee of five students and four faculty or staff oversees this budget and makes a recommendation to the university president for how to spend it each year. Different departments, such as the student newspaper or counseling center, approach the committee each year to request funding for the future. The committee meetings are open to the public. The only real rule is that the activities must be extracurricular and “directly involve or benefit” students. So, that’s how it works.

Reasons

Knowing this, therefore, it would be inappropriate for the university to compel promotion of DEI tenants through mandatory student fees given the conflict this would broach with some students’ religious beliefs. For example, DEI stands on critical race theory which states asserts that white people setup Western society for their own benefit through systematic racism. Therefore, race, CRT proponents assert, is the central organizing principle of society.

This assertion nears a religious claim to truth and conflicts with the teaching of major world religions. Moreover, the concepts of gender identity fluidity that social justice advocates promote conflicts with traditional Hindu beliefs about gender and the sexes. Therefore, for students who morally object to DEI’s near-religious-like teaching, funding the propagation of these ideas would qualify as compelled speech since the new director and the center’s presentations of these ideas are not viewpoint neutral.

Student funding for DEI promotion is compelled speech and would injure the conscience of those whom the university compels to participate through mandatory student fees..

Furthermore, it doesn’t sound like this idea came from the students. It sounds like it came from the administration. Students should not have to compete with administrators about the use of their own funding. Administrators should obtain their own sources for funding and not interfere with students’ funding for administrative agendas. 

Conclusion

For these reasons, the administration should immediately forfeit its receipt of student fee money for the new diversity director and center for unity given the conflicts these activities present to rights to conscience, due to the appearance of this really being an administrators’ idea rather than a student interest, and to protect student fee money for student purposes only.

Twitter: @Jhescock12

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Feature image: "Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr