Student activists rally at Board of Governors meeting to defend diversity
Tallahassee, FL – On January 25, about 80 students and activists from various organizations rallied outside Florida State University’s student union building, where the Board of Governors meeting voted to approve new guidelines that prohibit schools from using government funds for DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and to remove sociology from the list of classes that fulfill required general education credits.
Students from Florida A&M University and Tallahassee Community College were also present to give public comments at the meeting and participate in the rally outside. They talked about how these decisions are made undemocratically and unreasonably restrict students' right to choose what they want to learn about.
Joelle Nuñez of SDS said, “This is part of a wider push to censor our education. The Board of Governors is bending at the knee to politicians that don’t want us to learn about oppression so that we don’t fight back against it, but that’s not going to work.”
Trenece Robertson, a student at Florida A&M University, said “People are facing food insecurity, housing insecurity, there are students who are couch surfing because they can’t find student housing, and this is what the board is worried about?”
The protest was led by FSU’s Students for a Democratic Society, and speakers from FSU NAACP, Florida Student Power Network, FSU Environmental Service Program, Youth Action Fund, and White Mouse Productions were all present to express their disapproval of these new regulations.
They chanted, “Money for schools and education, not for racist legislation” and “Education is a right, not just for the rich and white.”
Protesters recognized that this is part of a larger attack on not only diversity, but LGBTQ rights, Black history in schools, and general access to education.