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Cal Poly’s DEI office to be renamed following Trump’s executive order

January 24, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo is renaming its Office of University Diversity and Inclusion under the umbrella of the University Personnel Division following an executive order from President Donald Trump, Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong announced Friday.

On Tuesday, Trump issued an executive order against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies at colleges and universities. The purpose of the order is to eliminate “illegal preferences and discrimination.”

“Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex,” Trump said in his order. “The American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.”

Cal Poly administrators plan to announce the new name for the Office of University Diversity and Inclusion at a later date, according to Armstrong’s announcement.

A former professor at Cal Poly, Al Liddicoat, will serve as the vice president for the division upon his return to Cal Poly. Liddicoat is currently serving as interim vice chancellor for the California State University System.

“This integration will enable us to better serve our students, faculty and staff, while driving meaningful progress in fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment for all,” Armstrong said.

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The DEI initiatives at Cal Poly are a sham and a failure. As for DEI in hiring, I’ve read every DEI document I can find; DEI policies are included in hiring policies as “guidelines”. This means the admin can say any DEI policy is not a rule but a guideline, which allows the admin to get away with unfair policies. What this means is that if departments don’t follow the guidelines, then they risk getting their funding cut by the college and/or university. Not once in any DEI document I’ve read did it say to hire the best person for the job. Let’s face it, hiring good professors is a tough problem with the low pay at Cal Poly for instructors and high local cost of living; it’s simply much easier to base success on demographics rather that actual quality of instruction. As for students, generally speaking, the non-white students come from area with lower quality K-12 based on school funding from those areas. The overall quality of education is going to suffer if you start letting in more students who are unprepared for college, particularly when the admin remains focused basing success on graduation rates and time to graduation. If you want more non-white students to succeed in college, you better put your effort into bumping up k-12 educational quality for underrepresented students. Hiring and/or paying bean counters at the college level won’t solve any problem.


4

This sounds like a repeat of “teach children in English” fiasco. Go through the motions and make it appear like you’re complying, however, when it comes to actions, nothing has changed, except for some labels.


16

Renaming the department does nothing. If these folks were needed for other things they would be doing it. They should all be terminated.


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