University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella sent a letter to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen on April 1 outlining the university’s plans in regards to DEIA-related programs and language.

The letter detailed steps the university is taking to comply with President Trump’s Executive Order, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity. 

The executive order ends all federal DEI policies, which the Trump administration labels as discriminatory and unlawful. Higher education institutions including the UA are at risk of losing federal funding if they choose not to comply with the order. 

According to Garimella’s letter sent to Petersen, “Administrative units and personnel have begun the process of discontinuing any preferential treatment activities and programming within their units to ensure full compliance with the federal executive order and related guidance.” 

In the letter, Garimella shared that all college deans are being told about the areas affected by the federal order, and that all non-academic service units are implementing DEIA-related changes based on recent reviews of DEIA programs.

UA has already removed the Office of Diversity and Inclusion website, the institutional diversity and inclusion statement from job postings and diversity and inclusion language from its Land Acknowledgement. 

The letter sent by Garimella has yet to clarify what programs will be specifically affected, but students, faculty and staff have begun asking for more transparency. 

On March 20 cultural resource centers and DEIA workers at the UA shared a post on social media demanding that higher administrators be clearer about their plans for the future of programs, centers and resources. 

In the post that several CRCs made, they asserted that they deserved a commitment to maintaining and expanding support for DEIA initiatives and insisted on being included in conversations about funding, staffing and long-term planning.

“Collectively, CRCs at the UA have over 28,000 visits a year from current and future students and their families, faculty, and staff,” the post said. “Miscommunication and misinformation at the senior administration and the department leadership levels had caused undue harm and chaos to the CRC and UA community, with no guarantees regarding the future of the CRCs or the employment of countless students and staff, we have no choice but to make our demands for the future of our programs and employees public.” 

According to Lilly Arthur, director of Feminists Organized to Resist, Create and Empower, there has been virtually no communication between the administration and student cultural organizations like FORCE.

“They [higher administration] have not told us anything. We are just relying on the cultural resource centers to keep us updated and they are doing the best that they can,” Arthur said.

FORCE is both a student organization and an internship program offered through the Women and Gender Resource Center. While the group has secured student service fee funding for the next 2 years, many members are concerned they may lose their physical space in the WGRC due to recent administrative decisions following Trump’s executive order.

Arthur, along with other FORCE students, operates the Feminist Pharmacy out of the WGRC. The pharmacy provides students with free access to Plan B, safe sex supplies and menstrual products.

“If we don’t have access to this physical space, we don’t know where the Feminist Pharmacy will be,” Arthur said.

Just this semester, the Feminist Pharmacy has distributed over 100 free doses of Plan B to students on campus, according to Arthur.

“It’s important the work that we do here to support people that this university wasn’t made for,” Arthur said, “So many of the successful stories they talk about is because of the support provided by cultural resource centers.”

Petersen stated in a social media post on April 9 that the UA’s move to comply with Trump’s executive order was positive, calling DEI programs discriminatory.

“All eyes are now on Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. I look forward to hearing back on their progress to comply with the law,” Petersen stated in the post. 

He affirmed that Arizona Senate Republicans were ready to assist in these efforts in any way they can.

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