LSU’s Student Senate held its first meeting of the semester Wednesday night; the Reveille spoke with senators and other SG members to understand their thoughts on recent changes in LSU’s online diversity, equity, and inclusion language.
In recent weeks, LSU has quietly replaced DEI language in much of its digital landscape. This shift has prompted questions about the university’s ongoing commitment to DEI.
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Early January, President William F. Tate IV announced via email that the Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights and Title IX would be renamed to replace the word inclusion with engagement. Around the same time, the university removed its online diversity, equity and inclusion statement in a wide-ranging scrub. Several schools within the university removed the language as well.
Student Sen. Lailah Williams from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences voiced her concerns about the lack of information and detail discussed with students.
“I think that the higher-ups who made this decision should have made more of a concerted effort to include students in the dialogue and the conversation,” Williams said. “The changes to the office on the surface level and the naming of the office on the surface level don’t seem inherently malicious. I think that by taking diversity, equity and inclusion out of the name is not really necessary to accomplish what they intend to do.”
John Micheal Sweat, SG director of academic affairs, addressed similar concerns regarding student involvement in making these decisions.
“They should have sent messages at least a month beforehand, polling for student opinions, doing focus groups or whatever necessary,” he said.
Sweat also connected the change in DEI language to Louisiana’s recent change in governor.
“The president of the university meets with the governor’s office a lot, and I’d be willing to bet that they talked about that, or at least predicted it in some way, and changed the name,” Sweat said.
Williams expressed a similar viewpoint, namely that the university’s changes to its online presence have been affected by outside influence.
“Even though it seems that it came from our administration, it came from higher than them,” Williams said. “I think a lot of people have a common misconception that they just did it without any consulting or instruction from people higher than themselves.”
President Tate has said that the move to “engagement” from “inclusivity” and similar changes by the university have not been influenced by any politician.
SG amid the changes has retained its Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Its director, political science senior Reginald Rideaux II, told the Reveille he was “disappointed” by the university’s removal of DEI language.
“One-thousand percent I don’t like the fact that they’re removing diversity, inclusion and equity, from, you know, our online presence, especially in the sense that like, it almost seems as though you’re taking away those students’ existences, in a sense,” Rideaux said. “But I understand from a political aspect why the university is taking that position.”
Rideaux said he had plans to meet with the Vice President of the new Division of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX Todd Manuel to talk about the future of SG’s DEI department.
“So, actually, we’ll be having meetings with some higher-ups within the university to understand our role because we know some other people at other universities whose roles have been changed and their roles may have been eliminated,” Rideaux said.
Rideaux said he was committed to continuing his work.
“But, you know, here currently, as it stands, we’re still the Department of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, [and] we’re gonna go further to push those three principles,” he said.
This article has been updated with the correct spelling of Student Senator Lailah Williams’ name.
