Just one day after the Mississippi House of Representatives passed legislation aiming to squash diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) campaigns in public education settings, the Senate followed in the footsteps of its cross-chamber counterpart.
Senate Bill 2515, dubbed the “Requiring Efficiency for Our Colleges and Universities System (REFOCUS) Act,” passed with only Republican support following a series of impassioned remarks by supporters and opponents alike.
The bill aims to ensure that all hiring and admissions practices at public institutions of higher learning are merit-based, preventing one from being elevated solely because of his or her race, gender, or sexual orientation. It would also force institutions of higher learning receiving taxpayer dollars to shutter DEI offices and bar them from conducting diversity training for staff and students.
The bill creates a task force consisting of legislators and some appointees by the governor and lieutenant governor to address how efficiently and effectively Mississippi’s public colleges and universities are operating. One of the primary objectives is to focus on ways to improve the state’s low graduation rates on the postsecondary level.
Multiple Democratic lawmakers, a majority of whom are Black, spoke out against the legislation. While passionately referencing Mississippi’s troubled past, including slavery, disenfranchisement, and Jim Crow, the handful of dissenting voices challenged the motive of the bill and raised concerns over the prospects of history repeating itself.
Sen. Bradford Blackmon, D-Canton, contended that abolishing certain inclusion initiatives could move the Magnolia State in the opposite direction of progress. Blackmon, the son of retired Rep. Ed Blackmon and former Sen. Barbara Blackmon, acknowledged that he was not directly harmed by discrimination in college but spoke on his father’s encounters with prejudice in the state.
He argued that ending DEI programs would leave minority students without certain safety nets that give them a sense of safety, security, and even acceptance on a campus where they are not the most represented demographically.
“Both of [my parents] were alive when segregation was going on, and they went to segregated schools for a solid portion of their life. For my father, the
Read original article by clicking here.