The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents will vote at 5 p.m. today on whether to “realign” one-third of the system’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff away from DEI and toward “student success.” If they vote in favor of the resolution, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos will release the funding for cost-of-living pay raises for about 34,000 UW employees — funding that was already approved by the full legislature — as well as funding for a new engineering building at UW and other projects on other campuses.
The deal comes months after Vos and others in the state legislature expressed a desire for UW to cut all DEI positions and programming, going so far as to cut $32 million from UW’s allocation in the state budget — the same amount spent on DEI.
In the course of budget negotiations, State Senate Committee on Universities and Revenue Chair Rob Hutton requested a variety of information from UW System, including a full list of positions related to DEI. UW System staff provided a list of 227 employees whose jobs are in some way related to DEI. They include administrative support staff as well as deans and vice chancellors; LGBTQ+ employee retention specialists as well as veterans’ service coordinators.
Madison365 obtained the correspondence through an open records request, and we are making the list available now for the first time.
Click here to download an Excel spreadsheet.
The deal the Regents will vote on tonight says a minimum of 43 positions that must be realigned away from DEI, which means about 100 of the positions in the initial list are not up for realignment because they are either currently not filled or are faculty positions and not subject to the terms of the agreement.
Madison365 will provide continuing coverage as the Regents meet and the vote takes place this evening.
