A new Mississippi bill would both create an “efficiency task force” to judge whether public money is being well-spent and to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices at colleges and universities.
Republican State Sen. Nicole Boyd introduced Senate Bill 2515, or the “Requiring Efficiency For Our Colleges And Universities System (REFOCUS)” Act, on Jan. 20. The legislation aims to gauge how well Mississippi’s public colleges and universities are functioning. The goal, Boyd says, is not to shut schools down.
“I think we have to in Mississippi be efficient with the dollars that we have, and this is what this taskforce is looking at,” Boyd stated. “The goal of the taskforce is not to close any colleges but is simply to look and see what are the plans that they have to increase their enrollment?”
“This all is about making them more efficient and then creating a stronger workforce for the state,” she continued.
The bill’s primary aim is to create a “Mississippi University System Efficiency Task Force” to “examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the public university system in Mississippi, as it relates to the universities’ collective mission of enrolling and graduating more degreed Mississippians and retaining them in the state.”
Besides focusing on spending efficiency, the bill also bans DEI offices in the state’s public colleges and universities.
Several Mississippi public universities have already revised some of their DEI initiatives, albeit without eliminating them completely.
Boyd finds that there is a connection between DEI and inefficiency, saying: “DEI programs have not proven to be in many situations particularly efficient at really helping people . . . DEI programs in many cases have not been the most productive use of dollars.”
[RELATED: Air Force Academy drops ‘Diversity and Inclusion Studies’ minor]
Senate Bill 2515 is not the only anti-DEI bill currently being considered in the Mississippi legislature.
Republican State Sen. Angela Burks Hill introduced similar legislation, Senate Bill 2223, on Jan. 20, which mandates that the state’s public institutions of higher education cannot “establish, sustain, support, or staff a diversity, equity, and inclusion office or to contract, employ, engage, or hire an individual to serve as a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer.”
Campus Reform contacted State Sen. Boyd for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
