The University of Wisconsin Office of Human Resources (OHR) will no longer host gatherings and events intended to aid retention of people of color on staff and faculty through community building, according to an email obtained by Madison365.
Monthly lunch events “create a sense of community and belonging, hold space for connection, care, and individual, interpersonal and collective well-being of BIPOC employees on campus, (and) all a safe space to just BE,” according to a flyer posted to the OHR website.
Monthly events focused on women of color have been going on for nearly 10 years, according to two people familiar with the events’ history. Those events began as an informal, grassroots effort in a different department and were absorbed into OHR’s Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Employee Well-Being (EIEW) in 2022, when it created the BIPOC Network and began hosting monthly all-gender events for people of color as well as the events for women of color. Several hundred employees have opted into the network, which will still exist, according to the email.
The email sent to the network reads:
“In response to uncertainty associated with recent federal actions and executive orders, and in alignment with recent campus-wide guidance on fiscal controls, the Office of Human Resources has opted to discontinue the BIPOC and BIWOC employee network gatherings and meetings previously facilitated by the Office of Equity, Inclusion and Employee Well-Being.
The BIPOC and BIWOC Employee Networks will remain, and employees should feel welcome to continue to engage with their colleagues through these networks. The Office of Human Resources remains committed to cultivating a working environment where all employees can grow and thrive.”
In late 2023, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents agreed to reorient one-third of the diversity, equity and inclusion positions on all UW campuses to focus instead on “student success,” among other DEI-related concessions, in exchange for continued state funding. Additionally, the Trump Administration has attempted to purge DEI from the federal government and threatened federal grant funding of institutions that prioritize DEI.
The termination of the BIPOC Network events does not to appear to come in response to any specific threat or promise.
“This was a programming decision made internally by the Office of Human Resources in response to collective fiscal and federal uncertainty affecting both the office and the campus,” UW spokesman John Lucas wrote in an email to Madison365.
One regular participant in the lunches, who asked to remain anonymous, called the move “anticipatory compliance.”
“One of the more frustrating things for me as an employee at the university is knowing that there has not yet been an official order or mandate of any sort from the chancellor’s office saying, ‘Don’t do this,’ and that this is all speculative,” he said.
He said the lunches, attended by dozens of people each month, included programming but it was kept to a minimum, allowing for more organic interaction.
“It was just an amazing opportunity for folks within the BIPOC community to get together and allow them to socialize and to decompress,” he said. “Oftentimes it was just conversation prompts at the tables. You know, those are all things that were allowing us the opportunity and prompting us to take the opportunity to talk to each other about some of the issues that, as a BIPOC employee on campus at the University of Wisconsin Madison, you faced, right and kind of being able to talk about those things in open forum.”
The email to the BIPOC Network announcing the termination said the BIPOC Network will still exist. In an email to Madison365, Lucas wrote, “This decision only removes resources previously provided or managed by the Office of Human Resources to coordinate or facilitate these events and gatherings. It still allows employees to coordinate employee-facilitated gatherings through the BIPOC and BIWOC Employee Networks as professional communities of practice.”
Lunches have been funded by on-campus sponsors, including UW Athletics, Office of Human Resources, Division of Teaching & Learning, Office of Academic and Career Success, School of Human Ecology, Office of Strategic Consulting and Wisconsin Union.
“The feedback at every one of those that I ever heard from people was like, ‘God, this is just so needed,'” said the regular participant who spoke with Madison365. “You know, this is a reset for us, and everybody looks forward to it every month. Honestly, they could have served a juice pouch and potato chips and people would have still probably showed up, just to be able to be each other.”
Representatives of OHR and EIEW did not respond to requests for comment.
