In the month after the University of Alaska Board of Regents decided to scrub mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion, those words have gradually disappeared from university webpages.
That decision was made in response to increasing pressure from the Trump administration to cut mentions of DEI. But critics of the decision are concerned about the lack of transparency in the process.
The Board of Regents made a lot of decisions during its regular two-day meeting in Soldotna in February. But the one that got a lot of attention from the public wasn’t actually on the agenda.
On the second day of the meeting, Board Chair Ralph Seekins suddenly brought up a motion to remove mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion from university websites.
“Are we ready for this?” Seekins said.
He asked Regent Seth Church to read it.
“I move the Board of Regents direct the President to take all necessary actions to comply with recent federal executive orders and applicable agency guidance,” Church said.
But this motion wasn’t on the agenda. And members of the UA community are wondering if the board violated the Alaska Open Meetings Act. An investigation by KTOO found that the board followed the letter of the law, but their process did leave the public in the dark until after the decision was made.
The law ensures governing bodies, like the Board of Regents, conduct their business in the open, said Savannah Fletcher, a Fairbanks-based public interest attorney. She said suddenly bringing up the motion in the meeting means no one in the public saw it coming.
“No one had the chance to weigh in, and people still may not have heard what actually happened on the meeting because they haven’t heard the recording, whereas they might have called in and listened in real time if they knew this was on the line,” she said.
Under the Open Meetings Act, the public needs to be informed of the time and place of any public meeting before it happens. Fletcher said in an email that governing bodies generally include agenda items in public notice. She wrote that not doing so makes it meaningless to tell the public a meeting is coming up.
The agenda was posted ahead of the meeting. While it included federal regulatory compliance as a discussion topic during the board’s executive session, a motion to scrub DEI from the university websites was never included.
The way it ended up on the agenda is allowed under the board’s bylaws, but it’s complicated.
The Board can change the agenda at two times. It can happen at the beginning of the meeting when the agenda is approved, or afterward if the change is approved by a vote of the members.
In this case, there seemed to be no vote to change the agenda. But Public Affairs Director Jonathon Taylor said instead of voting, the board approved the agenda change by an act of consent. That means no one objected to bringing the motion forward for discussion.
Church declined to comment on the motion. Seekins also did not respond to a request for comment from KTOO.
Albiona Selimi, the student regent and the only dissenting vote, said she wasn’t expecting to vote on a motion so soon.
“I had a very strong suspicion that it would come up, obviously, because it was a big topic that had come up within that time, I personally did not know or think that it would be coming to a motion so quickly,” she said.
Selimi said the lack of public testimony made the vote difficult for her. But afterward, Selimi said people in the university community told her she did the right thing. University organizations that represent staff and student leaders also passed resolutions condemning the decision and the manner in which it was carried out.
The public interest attorney, Fletcher, said the public still has a right to know about agenda items, even if issues were time-sensitive.
“We want government to be transparent, and with transparency, there sometimes are delays, because if you want to vote on something and it’s time-sensitive, you still have to comply with some kind of notice,” she said. “Even if there’s a notice for an emergency special meeting, the public needs have a chance to know about it and then accordingly comment on it.”
The Board of Regents didn’t break the law, but Fletcher said if it had, it could easily fix it. All it would have to do is put the motion to a vote again in a meeting where all parts of the Open Meetings Act are followed.
Fletcher herself is against the decision, but she said she understands why the board made it.
“I don’t think it was the right move, but I’m also not the person in that room that has the fear of all this funding for so many professors and grad students and undergraduate research getting pulled,” Fletcher said. “It seems like they were trying to soften the blow with commentary about still supporting Alaska Native culture and the Alaska Native community within our university system, but those seem to be talking out of two sides of your mouth, if you ask me,”
University leadership said these decisions protect the federal funding Trump is threatening to pull. In the motion and communications following it, the board continues to say it’s committed to nondiscrimination.
In the meantime, the university has already renamed different offices and committees as a result of the Board of Regents’ decision.
The University of Alaska Southeast removed a webpage on the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Cultural Safety as it considers changes. The campus is reviewing more than 165 mentions of DEI as well.
Other changes occurred before the motion passed, such as removing mentions of “Alaska Native” on the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program website, or taking out the words “affirmative action” from the university’s nondiscrimination statement.
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