“I want to thank every member of the Board of Regents for the thoughtful engagement that they have brought to their consideration of the issues we face and to their difficult but important conversations,” UW Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said in a message to the campus community following the vote. “Compromise is never easy and this compromise is far from perfect, but I continue to believe this pathway will permit us to hold onto our core values – including our firm commitments to diversity and belonging – while also allowing us to move forward,” she added. On the table was $800 million, which included funding for staff pay raises and a new engineering building. This year, Republican lawmakers refused to release funding for the new building and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos blocked pay raises for employees at UW until the school system cut spending on diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI) programs. Amid the demand by GOP lawmakers to scale-back DEI initiatives, the regents voted last Friday to not accept the nearly billion-dollar payday and keep their DEI programs as they were. However, some within the board of regents were open to making concessions and pushed to hold another vote. Now, following an 11-6 vote, UW has accepted the deal and will “realign” DEI programs by allowing at least 33 percent of those roles (roughly 43 positions) to be cut and reassigned to “areas with a primary focus on academic and student success,” according to meeting materials from a Dec. 13 special meeting of the board or regents. “In recent years we’ve seen a growing emphasis on concepts that amplify ideas of division, exclusion and indoctrination on our campuses,” Assembly Republican Speaker Robin Vos, who brokered the deal with UW, said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press (AP). “Our caucus objective has always been aimed at dismantling the bureaucracy and division related to DEI and reprioritizing our universities towards an emphasis on what matters — student success and achievement.” Gov. Tony Evers released a scathing statement, blasting the deal as a “vast overreach by a group of Republicans who’ve grown exceedingly comfortable overextending, manipulating, and abusing their power to control, subvert, and obstruct basic functions of government.” Jay Rothman, President of the UW system, hailed the deal as a victory. “Compromise can be extraordinarily difficult, and I acknowledge that not everyone will be happy,” he said. “Significant priorities that will benefit our students are in this agreement.”In a sharp reversal, the Universities of Wisconsin System Board of Regents (UW) has voted to accept a deal pitched by Republican lawmakers to scale back diversity programs in exchange for state funding.
