In response to House Bill 4, which targets Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programming in postsecondary institutions, Kentucky college students are hosting demonstrations on Friday. The Kentucky ‘DEI Day’ is a collaboration between all eight of the state’s public universities.
Cameron Jenkins is a junior at MSU and vice president of MSU Evergreen, an environmental organization. Jenkins said these demonstrations are important.
“College students care about DEI and we all benefit from having diverse organizations in our communities and in our campus and that we want to uplift diverse voices because they’re all important to us and we all benefit from them,” said Jenkins.
Last week a judge temporarily blocked most of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending federal funding support for DEI programming. No further action has been taken yet on Kentucky’s House Bill 4. Even so, government agencies, many private companies, and schools are axing their DEI programming. That appears to include Morehead State University. All DEI related search results online now lead to a general information page for the school.
Brie Yates is a junior at MSU and president of Alliance, an LGBTQ+ organization on campus. They said other resources have also gone missing recently.
“They used to have a page up that was specifically about LGBTQ health and resources and they took that down,” said Yates.
In response to a WMKY inquiry about the pages, MSU officials said, “There are a host of federal executive orders as well as potential state legislation. MSU continues to monitor the legislation.”
MSU’s DEI Day demonstration is planned for noon at the Bell Tower. Yates said the goal of the gathering is to show there are people in the state who care deeply about DEI.
