GET ME REWRITE: GOP uses state budget to make reactionary political statement

Photos:  Wisconsin Senate, Wisconsin  Assembly

Headline:  Wisconsin Public Radio, 2/29/2024

["corrections' noted by RG]

The $32 million in funding was set aside by Republicans for workforce development initiatives during the last state budget process. But soon after the budget passed, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, announced the funding would not be released until the UW ended diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programming and staff. 

Since then, campuses like UW-Oshkosh, UW-Platteville, UW-Parkside and UW-Green Bay have announced plans to cut hundreds of employees to close existing budget deficits due to declining enrollments and a decade-long freeze on residential tuition increases, which ended last year.  

The release of the $32 million is one of the final pieces of a compromise GOP power play reached between initiated by Vos and the UW System Board of Regents in December. Under the deal, the UW agreed to support a GOP bill requiring automatic admissions of top performing state high school students, freeze DEI staffing, “restructure” 43 existing DEI positions and end a UW-Madison initiative aimed at attracting more diverse faculty.

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