Students worry for CSU’s cultural resource centers during Trump admin’s anti-diversity effort
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FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Laras Prasetya arrives at Colorado State University just before 8:00 a.m. for her first class every Monday.
After class, Prasetya often starts her homework. Her favorite place to work is the Asian Pacific American Cultural Center (APACC). APACC is one of seven cultural resource centers at the university that provide thematic programming and resources to support a range of affinity groups on campus.
“I've made a lot of friends by just going there,” said Prasetya, a first-year health and exercise science major.
Prasetya grew up in Fort Collins, but she initially struggled to fit in on campus.
In many classes, “I'm still one of maybe two or three people of color,” said Prasetya, whose parents emigrated from Indonesia.
“It was really hard to find other people with similar cultural backgrounds because it is predominantly white.”
White students make up 70% of CSU’s undergraduate population.
Prasetya credits APACC and the activities it hosts — like the Lunar New Year celebration and a peer-mentoring program — with helping her build a community on campus.
Last week, the future of APACC and the university’s six other cultural resource centers came into question, when CSU became the first university in the state to roll back commitments to its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
On February 18th, CSU president Amy Parsons shared a letter with the community describing the changes:
“We will shift some employee job duties and human resources policies and processes, and we will make some changes to CSU’s websites to reflect the institution’s compliance with federal guidelines.”
Parson’s decision came in response to a separate letter from the Department of Education that accused universities with DEI policies and programs of “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.” The Trump administration has threatened to pull federal funding from universities that continue to offer programs that support diversity, equity and inclusion.
Educators and higher education organizations have sued the Trump administration over the president’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion executive orders.
Although the popularity of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts has waned in recent years, about half of American workers agreed that “in general, focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is mainly a good thing” according to a Pew Research Center survey from October 2024. Twenty-one percent said it was “mainly a bad thing.”
Students protested CSU’s decision Feb.19 by marching and hosting a sit-in at the university administration building the following day.
Aubree Miller, a sophomore journalism major, covered the protests for the Rocky Mountain Collegian, the campus newspaper. Miller estimates that roughly 200 students took part in the first protests.
In response to student protests, President Parsons clarified on Feb. 20, “There will be no substantial changes made to the Cultural Resource Centers at this time.”
“The federal government, however, may force us to change the way they operate,” Parsons wrote.
Miller has been covering how decisions at the federal level might impact students since President Donald Trump took office.
“Every day I wake up and I see a new breaking news notification from the New York Times or the Associated Press, and I'm like, ‘oh, God, what now?,’” she said.
The week before Parson’s decision to end the university's DEI commitments, student protesters called for the university to do more to protect undocumented students from immigration raids.
Miller said that for most students she spoke with the most frustrating aspect of the university’s approach is its lack of transparency.
She pointed to subtle changes administrators have made to university webpages, like resources for undocumented students that have disappeared or trainings led by the Pride Resource Center that are now paused.
Miller found it “unsettling” that such changes were made without “anyone saying anything.”
“We're all trying to figure this out and no one really knows what's going on,” said Miller.
Miller doesn’t know whether to take the university at its word when it comes to the future of the cultural resource centers.
“On paper, the CRC’s are okay for right now. Everyone still has their job. But we have to look at what are the effects of someone even thinking they might lose their job? Or what are the impacts of someone being worried that the CRC is going to exist?,” said Miller.
Cultural resource center staff declined to comment as to how their job duties might change or have already changed.
Prasetya is hopeful that the university will keep student demands in mind, but she’s also pragmatic.
“There's only so much the university can do,” she said.
In a follow-up letter issued Feb. 21, Colorado State University system chancellor Tony Frank argued that the university had too much at stake to resist federal authorities.
“Some argue that we should stand firmly with our existing interpretation, defend our programs, and fight the legal battle to defend them if and when it comes to us. The concern that I have with this approach is that the risk we incur rests upon our employees and upon funding that is critical to supporting our students. Such a decision seems to me a bit like gambling with someone else’s stakes. If we gamble here and are wrong, someone else will pay the price,” said Frank.
Colorado State University receives roughly a third of its funding from federal sources.
Prasetya knows that if the university loses its federal funding, it could jeopardize resources like financial aid and scholarships.
“I couldn’t afford to go here,” if that happened, she said.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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