The College Planning Council (CPC) reconvened to discuss the recent letter that was sent out by the U.S. Department of Education.
On Feb. 14 a letter was sent to all colleges by the Acting Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights for the Department of Education, Craig Trainor, entailing that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs are unlawful. All colleges must comply to remove all DEI programs, or they risk losing federal funding.
This would mean dismantling programs like Umoja, Raíces, the Dream Center, ethnic studies classes and more.
Naturally, many questions and concerns were raised across the council in hopes to gain more clarification of the letter.
“The American Council of Education this morning [Feb. 18] had a webinar with Ted Mitchell, who was the Secretary of Education under the Obama administration,” Superintendent-President Erika Endrijonas said. “The reason they called the webinar today was to calm people down.”
The letter has raised a flood of concern across the state by teachers worried about their students. Endrijonas noted that in the webinar there were more than 5,000 participants all looking for some sort of clarification.
“I’ve seen some reporting and I certainly would agree with that reporting, the language used is very incendiary,” Endrijonas said.
The letter stated that the department intended that all colleges be in compliance no later than 14 days after the letter was sent out.
“The idea that every institution will come into compliance within 14 days is insanity,” Endrijonas said.
There were many concerns about how to proceed without breaking the law due to California state Proposition 209 that prohibits UC’s and other state entities from using race, ethnicity or sex as criteria in public employment, public contracting and public education.
“We comply with the law. California has prop 209 and we’ve been following prop. 209 since it passed. Because of that we are not in violation of what they’re talking about,” Endrijonas said.
With the many resources City College has to offer this letter not only affects faculty but more importantly the students.
“I will get heated about this, I’m not going to take DEI out of the core. This is not gonna happen,” Vice President of Academic Senate, Tara Carter said. “We will continue to do the work. We will continue to serve our students. We will continue to honor people of color. We will continue to honor the LGBTQ community.”
Endrijonas advised all faculty to keep serving all students like usual, and proceed as intended.
“This is not the direction as a college we would want to go, it’s certainly not what our values are,” Endrijonas said.
The next CPC meeting will take place on March 4.
