First on the Daily Signal — Defending Education uncovered that Simmons Law School at Southern Illinois University threatened students who did not attend a mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training with a “letter of reprimand,” which would be placed in a student’s permanent file and potentially shared with the bar.
“Those who cannot attend in person typically fulfill the make-up expectations without issue,” one of the school’s associate deans wrote to a student who did not want to attend the training, according to an email obtained by Defending Education. “If a student misses a required session and does not complete a make-up within a reasonable period of time, we typically issue a letter of reprimand.”
“That letter is placed in the student’s permanent file and would be shared with the bar if the file is requested as part of the character and fitness process,” the email, which the parental rights group uncovered through multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, added.
Other emails showed that the school focused their training on how the legal field is racially discriminatory.
For instance, the first portion of the training focused on bullying in the legal profession. One slide read, “bullying disproportionately affects traditionally underrepresented groups.” Another added that “lawyers of color were bullied more often than white lawyers.”
Defending Education also uncovered that the students lacked information about the purpose of the session but discovered a “mandatory DEI meeting sign-in sheet” when they arrived at the training.
In a statement to the Daily Signal, Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications at Defending Education, called the school’s threat toward students “indefensible and embarrassing.”
“Threatening law school students with a letter of reprimand if they refuse to attend a DEI session they were deceived about is indefensible and embarrassing,” a statement from Defending Education said.
This move at Southern Illinois University mirrors similar attempts from other law schools who have mandated DEI trainings for their students in recent years, as reported by The College Fix.
Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at Defending Education, told The College Fix in April that “law school is a time for real intellectual development, not infusing race-based programs into these legal paradigms.”
“In addition, 72 law schools appear to maintain DEI offices—or rebranded versions of them—that remain in operation,” she added. “They are instead ensuring race-based perspectives in legal education at the cost of excellence in legal education.”
Last year, a different College Fix article noted that a Goldwater Institute report found that DEI requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period. Meanwhile, the current undergraduate population at public universities will spend “at least 40 million hours” fulfilling these mandates in order to graduate, the report noted by The College Fix added.
