The battle over diversity, equity and inclusion took a new twist this week when a Senate budget committee agreed to withhold $36 million from state universities unless they can show they haven’t participated in certain DEI practices.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee added a proviso to the budget moving $35.7 million from state universities to the State Finance Council.
The council would hold the money unless the schools can show they haven’t participated in DEI practices related to hiring, admissions and tenure decisions.
The amount would be equal to 5% of the money appropriated for salaries, contractual services and commodities at each of the state regents institutions.
The affected schools would include the state’s universities as well as the University of Kansas Medical Center, the Kansas State extension systems and the Kansas State University Veterinary Medical Center.
School officials would have to appear before the State Finance Council – made up of the governor and top Republican and Democratic legislative leaders – to certify that DEI is not used in hiring, admissions, tenure reviews and promotion decisions, among other things.
The State Finance Council could then release the money to the state universities once they demonstrate they’re not asking for statements about DEI in making decisions about hiring, admission, and tenure.
“There is no requirement in here to kiss any rings,” said Republican state Sen. J.R. Claeys of Salina, who brought the proviso forward.
“It just simply requires them to stop doing things that are race based,” he said.
The budget proviso is the latest approach the Legislature has taken to address DEI.
It is similar to a bill in the House that would bar state universities and community colleges from requiring statements about diversity, equity or inclusion as a condition of admission, financial aid or hiring faculty.
And legislative auditors on Wednesday released an audit that detailed how much state universities had spent on DEI-related activities.
The budget proviso emerged less than a week after Jon Rolph, chair of the Board of Regents, explained his position on DEI as he awaits Senate confirmation to a second term on the panel. His comments were made at last week’s Board of Regents meeting.
Republican senators have already been skeptical of Rolph’s appointment to the board, believing him to be an advocate of DEI, something they believe fosters inequality in higher education. Rolph’s comments further stirred distrust with some senators.
“We probably wouldn’t even be here if we didn’t have the current chairman of the Board of Regents verbally flip off the Legislature, come up with his own personal definition of DEI,” Senate President Ty Masterson told the Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday.
“We don’t get to personally decide what DEI is,” Masterson said. “It by its fundamental core is dividing people up by their immutable, unchangeable characteristics, subdividing them into groups on those bases and treating them differently based upon that.”
Gov. Laura Kelly reappointed Rolph to the Board of Regents last summer. The Senate has been hanging onto the appointment since then, partly because of concerns about his position about diversity, equity and inclusion.
The Senate didn’t act on Rolph’s nomination again Wednesday when it confirmed Andrew French’s appointment to the Kansas Corporation Commission and Mark Engholm’s appointment as fire marshal.
In an interview the day after Rolph made his comments, Masterson said he thought the Regents chair was “tone deaf.” He thought the comments could hurt his nomination.
“I think it flies in the face of what the Legislature was trying to communicate and demonstrates he…does not fully understand what those words mean in higher education,” Masterson said.
Democratic state Sen. Pat Pettey of Kansas City said it was clear that the budget proviso was a reaction to Rolph’s comments at the Board of Regents meeting.
“I get confused when it comes to be somewhat personal attacks that then impact our higher education across the state of Kansas,” Pettey said.
Pettey said she was “appalled” by the proviso.
Masterson said the proviso was not personal, adding that he personally liked Rolph and considered him a friend.
“This is in no way personal, but I will concede it is obvious,” Masterson said.
Democratic state Sen. Jeff Pittman of Leavenworth opposed the proviso. He said it was a heavy-handed way to address the issue.
In an interview earlier this week, Rolph said the comments he made during the chair’s report last week were generally intended for an internal audience.
“We have a lot of people on campuses that are paying attention to what’s going on,” Rolph said.
“As a leader of the board and as the chair, it was important for them to hear from us.”
He said it was the “right time for a leader to lead.”
“That was really the heart and spirit of the comments,” he said.
“My posture as leader is to always want to continue the conversation to find ways to partner,” he said.
“The Legislature is an important stakeholder and partner in our mission. That’s why we’re always wanting to have dialog on this issue and many other issues.”
At the start of last week’s board meeting, Rolph directly addressed the issue of DEI and the legislation that would bar state universities and community colleges from requiring statements about DEI as a condition of admission, financial aid or hiring faculty.
Rolph’s comments were prepared. He said he didn’t run them by the governor’s office before making his chairman’s report last week.
Describing himself as a “work in progress” on DEI, Rolph also took a more personal approach, saying he was sometimes bewildered by objections to words like equity and inclusion and explained what they meant to him.
“When I am asked about my position on diversity, equity and inclusion, I am always curious as to what the person posing the question understands about the meaning of these terms individually and whether their understanding is informed by their own examination of issues and personal experience or whether it is just an abstraction of things that they have heard said about DEI,” Rolph said last week.
He said he didn’t understand opposition to the word “equity.”
Rolph said he defined equity as meaning “fairness of opportunity to participate,” although he added there appeared to be “considerable controversy” over the topic in the statehouse.
“I have trouble understanding the objection. I can only assume that there are those who hold to the belief that if you do anything at all to advantage one group, you are taking something away from another,” he said.
He also questioned the consternation about the word “inclusion.”
Rolph said inclusion is about creating an environment where all faculty, students and staff feel like they belong.
“The challenge we are faced with in Kansas is recognizing that our campuses include adult learners, veterans, first-generation Americans and people attending school at night to further their education to make themselves more valuable in the workforce.”
Dinah Sykes, the top Democrat in the Senate, said she believed that Rolph’s nomination could come to a floor vote next week.
“I think there was concern after his comments,” Sykes said, “but I feel like maybe everything is settling at this point.”
Rolph said that he hopes when senators consider him a second time, there’s a lot on his resume to examine beyond his position on DEI.
He said his business background coupled with his work on economic development and his passion for education make him valuable to the Board of Regents.
“I suspect that people will look at my complete resume again and would look forward to the opportunity to serve the state,” he said.
Rolph is president and CEO of Thrive Restaurant Group, which owns and operates over 150 restaurants including Applebee’s, Carlos O’Kelly’s and Modern Market.
Thrive is the nation’s second-largest Applebee’s franchisee with restaurants in 15 states.
Rolph was a two-time student body president at Baylor University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 2001.
After graduating, Rolph worked with college student leaders as an intern for the National Student Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C.
He returned to Kansas in 2002 to work in the family-owned businesses started by his father and his uncle.
