“Mizzou ends funding for minority student groups. ‘We are not done,’ groups vow” This was the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch one recent morning. It reflects the nearly impossible situation many academic institutions are in when it comes to government DEI directives, relationships with families and students, and broader public perception.
This post is not meant to be political. The Trump administration’s mandates surrounding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are what they are. In their interpretation, federal tax dollars cannot be used to fund an organization that favors one racial or ethnic group over another. Period. Full stop. This is a change because racial parameters have often been used to undo discriminatory policies from years past. The fact is educational institutions of every stripe are having to deal with this new framework. It is a tough line to walk from the standpoint of public relations.
The University of Missouri situation is a dicey one. Missouri is a “red” state, and Mizzou is governed by a Board of Curators which, while not allowed to have more than half its voting members belonging to one party, has two “independents,” both of whom come out of districts that have not elected a democrat in years. (The 8th Congressional District last had a democrat in the seat in 1927!)
But that conservative external leadership is countered by a much more liberal faculty and staff population and a student body that is between 20 and 25% minority. Additionally, while no specific geographic numbers are available, one can assume based on population breakdown that more than half of in-state students come from the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas, which are far less conservative than the rest of the state.
So, if you are doing PR at Mizzou your stakeholder audiences are:
- Board of Curators: Conservative
- Faculty and Staff: Liberal
- Student Body: A mix, but far less conservative than overall state demographics
- Minority Students: Liberal, and directly impacted more than others
- Taxpayers: Conservative
- Federal Education Officials: Conservative
For those scoring at home, you will not please everyone in these groups. In fact, you are likely to infuriate a significant percentage of this audience no matter what you do. So, what do you do?
Your best option is to express compassion while stating the fact that you have no choice but to follow the law. That is clearly what the University’s spokesperson was trying to do in the newspaper’s article, but, as you might expect, the student groups facing a potential 95% budget cut got much more of the play.
The spokesperson said the right things but was unable to have much impact on the overall tone of the story. In fact, you had to read to the very bottom if you were going to see his compassionate remark: “We understand that student groups are incredibly important to the vibrancy of our campus,” he said. “We love our student groups. But we also follow the law.”
Others have handled things differently. Washington University in St. Louis announced the formation of a committee to study the issues. This was a way to “kick the can down the road.” Two months later, they quietly scrubbed their website of DEI references. In their case, the audience was probably more unified against the federal DEI policies, but the University was facing the very real threat of government action against them. They had already seen massive amounts of research funds being pulled from Harvard and others.
In this instance, the University said little, but third-parties shared opinions that likely conveyed the message the university wanted in the public. The reference to universities around the country being “scared to death” is something I would certainly want to have out there if I was speaking for Wash-U, but I would be hesitant to say it if I was nervous about federal lawsuits or funding issues.
I am not suggesting there was any direction from the university to those third-party spokespeople in this case, but I have seen that approach used in situations like this, and it is not a bad strategy. Let someone else speak to the audience you truly want to reach who has the ability to speak more freely. This can be an association, a union, or simply an individual you trust who a reporter would view as a credible source. You are not asking anyone to be dishonest in any way. It is simply a function of getting the message you want out to the people you need to hear it.
This “no win” situation is not limited to higher education. The K-12 level is very much in the mix. I have done freelance work for an urban school district in the east that involved a full scrubbing of DEI language from their website and the monitoring of Google searches to ensure they could avoid trouble with federal regulators. The public side of this was somewhat easier for them because their families and their leadership were pretty much in lockstep regarding their negative view of the policies, and a smaller percentage of funding came from Uncle Sam. Here the statement can be more, “us against the world,” catering to your audience.
I have spoken with others who were doing the same work in public districts where the population is more politically split. This takes us back to where we began: the law. You are rarely going to be perceived as “wrong” or “at fault” when you are following a clear directive from the law. Let’s face it: no matter your politics, you don’t really have a choice.
This approach is not going to make you the hero of the story, but it can keep you from being the “bad guy” in the narrative. In some cases, that is the best outcome you can hope for.
