The University of Arizona has consolidated a number of campus resource centers aimed at serving specific populations of students into one umbrella unit. U of A officials say the move comes in response to executive orders and other rules from the Trump administration.
The seven cultural centers, which include the Women and Gender Resource Center, African American Student Affairs, Disability Cultural Center and Asian Pacific American Student Affairs will now be housed, along with the others, under an organization called Campus Community Connections.
Paul Ingram, who’s written about this for the Tucson Sentinel, joined The Show to talk about what this means and what folks at the U of A are saying about it.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Paul, good morning.
PAUL INGRAM: Hey, thanks for having me.
BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So what, what are these groups? Like what do they do?
INGRAM: So the campus, so the campus resources are really for helping students, you know, get the things that they need to do to get out of to graduate from the U of A. And so they've kind of been formed over the last several years. There's all the sorts of different flavors of them, and they're really built up to help students. And this is of course one of the things that the Trump administration said that the universities can't do because it's DEIA or it's diversity, equality, inclusion and accessibility.
And so they asked the U of A to shutter these programs and so what the U of A has done is instead consolidate them under one kind of single unit with another unit that's for Native American students that was actually spun out to one of the main departments at the University of Arizona.
BRODIE: So will these individual groups still sort of be individual under that umbrella unit, or is it everything getting mashed together?
INGRAM: They're being dissolved and they're being created into one bigger unit. It's, you know, one of the things that they did is that they fired most of the directors of these programs. We're not really sure what's going to happen to the staffers.
There's 80 staffers that includes staff as well a lot of students, so those that may kind of be dissolved as well, or those may be kind of integrated into one single unit that's sort of organized under the provost of the University of Arizona.
BRODIE: And am I right that U of A officials are basically saying this is because of what the Trump administration told them they had to do?
INGRAM: Yeah, I mean, exactly. There's, you know, they haven't said outright we're doing this because Trump told us to, but it's very clear that once they received something from the Department of Education saying that they couldn't have these kinds of programs at the university, you know, they said that they would kind of review these programs and then now they're taking all these programs putting them into one single consolidated unit and and under the under the provost's office. So it's pretty clear that there's a kind of an A to B relationship here, even though they haven't expressly said this.
BRODIE: So for students who use these programs and use the services that they offer, what are they saying about this change?
INGRAM: The students are really critical of this change. There was a protest at the U of A. There's actually been a few different protests, and there was also one petition campaign. About 3,000 students and staff members actually submitted a petition really asking the U of A president not to disband these programs to actually maintain them because they say they really help students. They consider kind of even a mental health issue. They said it really helps the students to not only succeed but to live their lives.
So, you know, for them, it's been they really they really, they're really critical of this decision by the U of A.
BRODIE: So I guess other than the fact that the individual programs are dissolved and it's now under this one umbrella unit, like does that mean that some of the services they offered aren't being offered anymore? Like I guess what if I was a student going to use one of these programs and some of these services, what specifically is different for me now?
INGRAM: Well, I think there's going to be fewer resources. I mean, naturally, when you consolidate things, you're, you're kind of kind of piling it all together into one place, which means that these programs might be not as focused on to individual students, so you may have a particular issue, you know, when we think about like the Disability Cultural Research Center, for example, I mean, that was really about helping disabled students get what they needed at the university, but also having counseling, individual help.
And so it's not really clear exactly how that's going to work with this new consolidation effort. One thing to keep in mind is, of course, we haven't seen this really happen in practice, so we don't really know what this is going to look like. It's possible that the U of A could pull off a bit of a miracle here, consolidate all these programs together with fewer staffers and still pull off the same level of care, but that's very difficult, I think, in reality. And also I mean for, you know, gay and lesbian students as well.
And one thing too is that there was an immigration student resource center that's basically just gone, and that was really kind of devoted to helping students who might have DACA, so or might have some people in their family who are undocumented. So that program has just sort of ceased to exist. So again, it's just not clear where the U of A is going to be.
We'll really have to ask those questions in August and September about saying What is this really going to look like? How many staffers do you have devoted and how many students are you really going to be able to help now that you've consolidated this all together?
BRODIE: Yeah, it would seem that the number of staffers would kind of be a key here, right? Because if you're able to, I would imagine if you're able to retain at least some good number of them, they would be able to provide at least some of the services they were providing before, even if it's under, you know, sort of a different name of a group.
INGRAM: Certainly, I mean, it's possible. I mean, with each of these having seven different programs means that there's a lot of overlap in these programs. So if you, if you kind of get rid of the overlap but keep all the counseling and aid, then maybe the students will actually, it may not really matter, but the lack of focus may become a problem for students as well. So there's a trade-off here.
You know, one thing about these cultural resource centers is they helped students last year about 28,000 times. So, you know, you can see that there's kind of a pretty big breath of help that students need. So I think really I mean I think it's just up U of A today to really show that they can do this and they can do this well with only having one single unit with, you know, kind of one overriding sort of mission, which is, you know, campus community connections.
