This is a lose-lose situation for instructors, students, and universities.
The American government has created https://enddei.ed.gov/, a website claiming to be dedicated to education “free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination.” The website provides a forum for people to anonymously provide their email, zip code, and school or school district they plan to report, as well as a field to write about their story of “discriminatory practice.” As a student and instructor, I know this will not end well.
It is important to distinguish what the real purpose of this new site is. The title itself tells us the goal is not to end discrimination in our schools and universities; the goal is to end DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is important to note because DEI and discrimination are NOT the same thing. Getting rid of DEI actually would allow discriminatory practice if two candidates of equal talent and experience differ in race, skin color, dis/ability status, gender, sexuality, veteran status, or other important identity markers. This call to end DEI would see fit that the candidate chosen would be closest to achieving in a meritocracy without intervention or accommodation. Basically, that means choosing not the best fit for position or institution, but choosing according to best fit of the “ideal” white, male, able-bodied, straight, cisgender person. It is quite a shame that our government has created a website dedicated not for ending truly bad things such as homelessness, poverty, hate crimes, murder, or dangerous germs that could potentially start another pandemic. No, they want to end diversity, equity, and inclusion.
It’s obvious I stand against this website, though I did utilize it to report a discriminatory action taken by President Trump in a recent executive order that aims to defund public education and get rid of the country’s Department of Education. However, if you do not agree with me on how good or bad DEI practices are, I hope you will agree with me that this website is not the right way to go about enforcing the president’s beliefs. Here’s why: there are no winners in this situation. We all lose.
Say, for example, a college student reports a professor for teaching critical race theory in their class. What happens next? The incident is investigated. During that investigation, the professor might not be able to continue teaching their courses. The department has to struggle to find a potential replacement instructor; this may cost more money and be a time suck for administrators. Students will suffer with no instructor, no grades, and no degree progress; if they’re lucky, they may get a replacement instructor who reorganizes the course or struggles to keep the course the same as the original instructor. The class falls into chaos for a short time.
It doesn’t just affect the students in the class either. The university could be investigated. This might cause some issues in university activities outside of the classroom. Time that should be dedicated to improving college experience and education is spent dealing with this investigation. Guess what? If found guilty of DEI discrimination, they could defund your university! That means losing instructors, losing classes, losing departments, losing degree options, and losing time that could be beneficial to degree completion and progress. Many instructors and admins would suffer consequences of just one student’s report.
In addition to these concerns, there is also the option that the report will not have enough information for an investigation to proceed. More time can be spent collecting proof of “discrimination,” or the student can consider the report they filed as wasted time. This, in my opinion, would be the best outcome of reporting on this site.
Obviously, a lot of these are just scenarios, but I’d hope that reading about the possibilities of using this website teaches people why using it would only create more problems with higher education, not lessen them, regardless of your political, moral, or ethical beliefs. I’m already worried for the universities that are set to be investigated based on submissions to the website. Like all cases with the government, be involved wisely and use discretion to figure out positive and negative ways to move forward with issues that concern you. And if certain issues in higher education don’t concern you (such as community members who are not students or employees at the university), mind your business and focus on issues in our city, state, and country that do directly concern you. People outside of education should not be making decisions about education for those of us who are involved; they don’t have the experience or credentials to do such (a truth based in the president’s belief in meritocracy). Funny how that works, isn’t it?