Amid Legislative Attempts to Shut Down DEI, Students Create New Spaces Across Campus

After two years in which Florida legislators passed laws to shut down funding for all DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) programs at Florida public universities, students have been busy creating their own spaces that don’t need a nod from the state or federal government.

Senate Bill 266 was signed in an effort to eliminate Diversity Equity and Inclusion from the state, according to an official statement from Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 15. The law took effect on July 1, and consequently, many DEI centers across the state were swiftly shut down. Staff employed in these centers lost their jobs, and many students their sanctuary. 

Florida Atlantic University was the first public university in the state to shut down its diversity center, the Center for IDEAS, or Center for Inclusion Diversity Education and Advocacy. A university audit done in 2023 stated that the center formerly received a budget of $400,000 per year, with five full-time staff members.

Trevian Briskey, an FAU senior who majors in business management and who recently became the head of the College Democrats group at FAU, interned at the Center for IDEAS prior to its closing. Consequently, Briskey lost his position once the bill was passed. 

“It was just a good safe space for students to be,” Briskey said regarding the center. 

“The Center for IDEAS is no longer active and it doesn't exist anymore, therefore I lost my position,” he said. “That’s why I ended up getting into student government and becoming the director of multicultural programming because that was the opportunity to actually create a difference and plan these organizations and events and coordinate with them and use the money that FAU was no longer giving us through student funding instead of federal funding.”

This bill came after a series of others like it, including HB 1557 Parental Rights in Education law, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans the discussion of sexual and gender identity in public school classrooms. However, some students said that at the college level, it is only now that the real impacts of this law are being felt.

“We found out that once that bill came in place that what the real effects were, was not just the office itself closing and not having an actual safe space to be that was funded, but also all of the staff lost their positions or got reassigned to different positions, including myself,” Briskey said in an interview, adding that it would also impact “community events that FAU would be apart of, FAU can’t formally be apart of anymore, simply because it’s diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Mary Rasura, a graduating FAU senior and Editor of OUTFAU, an award-winning LBGTQ-focused student-run newspaper, described the importance of spaces like the Center for IDEAS. Rasura called the new laws a form of censorship and against the rights of students.

“I kind of interpreted this anti-DEI stuff and defunding it through the school system, like through the state university system as a form of censorship, in my opinion, and of our right to gather… I think that these positions should exist on campuses,” said Rasura, a multimedia journalism major and member of the LGBTQ community.

And while FAU was the first university to shut down its centers, it was not the last, as the University of Florida and other major public universities quickly followed suit. However, the consequences were felt far beyond the removal of the space, with initiatives and programs held by the center now gone and the students seeking them left abandoned.

While this law may have recently gone into effect, bills like this are not a new occurrence. Dr. Fred Fejes, an LGBTQ historian, scholar and former professor at FAU, explained that there have been many acts of legislation of its kind throughout history.  

“Governor DeSantis is doing something that politicians in Florida have done for years… I think what happens is that politicians like DeSantis think that being this openly anti-LGBT politics or position is going to win him votes and I don't think it does,” he said.

Fejes also echoed the importance of such spaces existing for minority communities, on campus and beyond.

“Space has always been an important issue in the LGBT community… I think now having a safe [on campus] space for LGBT people is still important because it sort of acknowledges the fact that they are there, they are a community as a place where they can congregate and get together and get to know each other, and basically not be open to attacks or insults,” he said.

However, student groups are not backing down. Many rallies protesting the bans have been held across the state. 

Briskey was one of the students integral in the protesting of these bills. He fought relentlessly to stop the legislation aiming to dismantle the organizations he himself was a part of. Brisket and his peers organized protests, teach-ins, protests, and rallies to halt the ban on state funding for spaces like the Center for IDEAS.

“We organized a teach-in so that students on campus could be taught by faculty members within the political science building and among other colleges, and kind of understand what was going on from professionals,” Brisket explained. “We had protests just to raise awareness on campus.”

He and other students also participated in a rally called “Rally to Tally” where they drove up to Tallahassee, Florida's capital, in hopes of speaking with legislators as part of establishing the bills.

“We planned a ‘Rally to Tally’ with some student government leaders to go speak with legislators and see what exactly was happening and what students here on campus could do to kind of fight back,” Briskey said. “I also, along with those student leaders, got the opportunity to meet with the interim president, Stacey Volnick, of FAU.”

Students have also started their own groups in protest of this legislation, reclaiming the space that was lost.

BLISSS, which stands for  BIPOC LGBTQIA+ Individuals Seeking Safe Spaces, is one of the many groups started at Florida Atlantic, and which developed in protest of the various bills signed by DeSantis. Others include FAU Lavender Alliance, OUT FAU, and FAU Action Coalition, which was later dismantled after the bills passed and funding was halted, Briskey shared.

“We like to serve as a safe space or as another queer serving organization on campus, but what does set us apart from the other queer organizations on campus, is that we focus on the more multicultural aspect of it, we like to embrace your sexual identity as well as embrace your cultural background,” said Tyler Doll, BLISSS marketing coordinator. “We want to form a space where people of color can come and just express themselves and just be together.”

Despite all attempts from government officials and legislation to shut them down, students hope to continue growing their organizations and creating safe spaces for generations of students to come.

“The only thing I can really really ultimately hope for is students, not only on campus but reaching out to the community outside of campus. I’m hoping that all of these student organizations can do something like that, create a pipeline so that when these students do graduate, they can get and stay active in the community,” Briskey said.

“I don’t want to see DEI out in the state of Florida, because that is what created who I am today,” he continued.

“It does suck that the space [the center for IDEAS] is closed, but I think the one thing that people like me, or queer students in general can do is make a home with whatever they got,” Doll said, “because the home is where you take it.”

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