University of Missouri cuts designated funding for student affinity groups

Dive Brief:

• The University of Missouri’s Student Affairs will cut off five student affinity organizations from funding beginning in July, according to the public flagship and the groups.
• Mizzou said in a statement that it can “no longer allocate funding or space based on protected demographic characteristics,” citing guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice. Instead of receiving designated funds, the affected organizations would have to apply next year to a resource pool shared by over 600 campus groups.
• The student groups — including the university’s nearly 60-year-old Black student government — condemned the change as a further erosion of support for marginalized communities and said it will effectively end their university financial support. 

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Dive Insight:

The five organizations — the Association of Latin American Students and the Legion of Black Collegians, the Asian American Association, the Queer Liberation Front, and FourFront, a coalition for marginalized student groups — are all multicultural umbrella associations that support several campus groups geared toward minority students.

For example, the Asian American Association oversees groups like the university’s Vietnamese Student Association, Pan-Asian Mental Health Advocacy Coalition and multiple Asian fraternities.

Each umbrella organization receives funding from the Student Affairs office. Following the forthcoming changes announced by Mizzou, any funds each group may receive would come from the university’s Organization Resource Group, which serves hundreds of campus organizations.

Additionally, the Legion of Black Collegians is classified as a student government and the only such Black college student government in the country, it said on social media. The group said Sunday it will also lose that designation beginning in July.

Mizzou framed the change to the student groups as a restructuring, rather than an elimination of their funding.

“These organizations will now exist as recognized student organizations and be eligible for funding in the same manner as all other recognized student organizations,” the university said.

But the Queer Liberation Front said that change involves the “slashing of budgets that leave many of these organizations effectively bankrupt.”

Likewise, ALAS said Sunday the reclassification is “effectively a de-funding of our organization.”

“As an organization that serves and protects a broad group of students on campus, we are not in a position to compete with 600 other groups for an already limited amount of resources,” it said.

Mizzou Student Affairs officials informed the group’s leaders about the forthcoming changes during a Friday meeting. Student groups said the university cited a July memo from the U.S. Department of Justice that labeled many common college practices as potential civil rights violations. 

The DOJ guidance contains a list of practices it deems unlawful and “non-binding suggestions” for federal funding recipients. It classifies diversity, equity and inclusion practices like offering identity-based study lounges as unlawful, even if those spaces are open to everyone.

“It is important that we distinguish that a memo is not a federal law, thus this decision was at the hands of the University and the University alone,” ALAS said.

Student leaders have planned a demonstration against the cuts for Monday evening.

The LBC argued that Black students at Mizzou already have “extremely limited options” to find community on campus, citing the university’s elimination of its Division of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in 2024. At the time, Mizzou’s leadership attributed the decision to political pressure from the state’s Republican lawmakers.

The administration then “made it the sole responsibility of all multicultural organizations to do the university’s work of fostering student inclusion and belonging,” the group said. “This task was impossibly large to take on, but the Legion strengthened our efforts to care for Black students and ensure there is a community on campus.”

The forthcoming funding change “lacks genuine concern and empathy” for the Black Mizzou community and means the LBC will not be able to adequately protect students, it said on social media.

“We argue that this is intentional erasure,” the LBC said. “The University is taking calculated steps to push minority students further away from the Mizzou stratosphere. The aversion to creating diverse, equitable spaces on campus has plagued the values of respect, responsibility, excellence, and discovery which Mizzou claims they consistently uphold.”