Drake University President Marty Martin said Monday his campus community could see negative impacts of signed and potential legislation targeting civil rights protections and the Iowa Tuition Grant program. (Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch
When Drake University President Marty Martin sent an email to students earlier this month emphasizing his and the institution’s commitment to diversity and welcoming students to a safe, inclusive environment on campus, he didn’t do it as an act of bravery or courage.
Martin told an audience tuning in to his discussion with “Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck” founder and veteran reporter Julie Gammack over Zoom Monday that he was simply responding to a state action already making an impact on his campus, while reassuring students they all belong at Drake.
“This was, in my role as the president of Drake University, articulating the values of the place against something that had occurred and that was finding its way to our campus,” Martin said.
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The action he referred to Monday and in his March 3 email was legislation repealing the inclusion of transgender and nonbinary people in protections against discrimination based on gender identity in the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which he called in his message “one among many current state and federal efforts that seek to turn our differences into division.”
Iowa’s private colleges and universities are grappling with the consequences, both realized and potential, of state and federal decisions targeting or trickling down to their staff, faculty and students. Higher education leaders are weighing the hurt that could be caused by doing away with diversity, equity and inclusion programs and changing the criteria of Iowa Tuition Grant dollars, both proposed by the Iowa Legislature this session.
Legislation could discriminate against students, faith-based institutions
When previously discussing the potential for lawmakers to change the Iowa Tuition Grant program to promote high-demand career fields, Central College President Mark Putnam said he was unconcerned, as the Legislature cannot “repeal human development.”
Putnam has kept his stance even as bills proposing funneling at least half of Iowa Tuition Grant dollars to students earning degrees relating to high-demand, high-pay job fields and making the lack of a diversity, equity and inclusion office a prerequisite in institutions’ eligibility for the grant program have made their way through committee and are waiting for debate on the House floor.
“This is a fluid environment always as legislation is working its way through the system,” Putnam said. “So if something comes out of committee and it’s moving through the process, I think we just maintain our engagement around the same arguments that we’ve been expressing to legislators all the way through.”
Martin said the Iowa Tuition Grant program has been helpful for both students, who have to pay less out-of-pocket for their education, and for the state, since it costs less to provide a student some aid to attend a private college than it would be to educate them at a public university.
“It’s really cost effective for the state, it’s been highly effective for the individuals, and it continues to work,” Martin said.
A driving point Putnam made in the case against these changes — especially the one to ensure that a portion of grant dollars must go to students pursuing a degree related to a crafted list of high-wage, high-need jobs — is the outsized impact they would have on faith-based institutions like Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny.
As an institution with a large amount of faith-related academic programs, Putnam said it would be an “unfortunate reality” that most, if not all, of the students attending Faith Baptist would not make the list of high-demand jobs that would be created for the grant program’s reference. Religious discrimination is embedded in the bill, he added.
“Many of our colleges in Iowa are church-affiliated,” Putnam said. “And so whether they come from a Catholic background or Protestant background or other affiliations, there is an intent there.”
Many of Iowa’s private universities, whether they are religious or not, are small institutions that serve as a huge economic driver in their communities, Martin said, a large portion of which are in rural areas. If universities are forced to shrink, or potentially close, due to losing revenue students bring in through their grants, he said the towns they’re housed in will lose major employers, cultural and athletic hubs.
Around 30% of Drake students receive funds through the Iowa Tuition Grant program, Martin said. Higher education is already in a stressful environment with fewer young people choosing to go to college, higher costs, economic uncertainty and more, which Martin said even a well-resourced institution like his is finding challenging to handle. He said he can’t imagine how it is for smaller colleges, especially if they were to change Iowa Tuition Grant prerequisites.
“To the extent that the Iowa Tuition Grant is unavailable to any one of us, it’s going to have a major economic impact,” Martin said. “Some of us could weather that storm. Some of us could not.”
One important thing to consider with the Iowa Tuition Grant program, Putnam said, is that it goes straight to students, not institutions. If the Legislature does pursue this path, he said the students who receive these grants will feel the most pain.
These are students who are Pell-eligible, Martin said. When combining funds from a Pell grant and Iowa Tuition grant, he said students could receive up to around $14,000 in financial aid, which would then be added to scholarships and other aid provided by their institution.
“I don’t think we need state government or federal government making a decision about what a student can or can’t pursue in his or her own interest, in a state with the motto ‘freedom to flourish,’” Putnam said.
The idea of “purse strings” connected to policies is not a new one, Putnam said, but has been utilized for as long as government has existed. It has been a long practice to attach a certain will or interest connected to a policy matter to government funding.
However, applying this method to the Iowa Tuition Grant program is “ill conceived,” he said, as in the end, the proposed changes would hurt Iowa students the most.
“I think our task as independent colleges is is to outline what we think downstream implications are — collateral effects, unintended consequences — because there are (policies) both state and federal government are seeking to pursue, and they are, in one form or another, seeking to attach purse strings to that in order to gain compliance from all of us,” Putnam said.
Martin hears positive response to campus letter
This logic also applies to the operation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at private universities, Putnam said. Requiring independent colleges to shutter DEI offices in order to participate in the grant program could end up punishing students for the actions or inaction of the institution they chose to attend, possibly leading to them needing to pause or drop out of school.
Putnam described it as a potential “self-inflicted wound” on the part of the state government.
In the last few months, Martin said he’s seen a lot of “vitriol” directed at the acronym DEI in an attempt to make it “toxic,” but actions hadn’t yet been taken against it — just threatened. When he saw Gov. Reynolds had signed legislation revising Iowa’s civil rights code, Martin said he felt he needed to reach out to his community.
“It did seem to me that at that point, it was incumbent upon me as president to reaffirm our values and to assure those who we invited — not just those who found us, but those that we invited to be of the place of Drake University — that they were not just welcomed, but that they belong here,” Martin said.
In the letter, Martin said Drake’s expanding diversity is one of the institution’s biggest strengths, having positive personal and professional impacts on those who populate the campus community. Part of the university’s purpose and responsibility is to prepare students to realize their full potential and take on an increasingly connected world, he said.
Passing the legislation to strip state civil rights protections from transgender and nonbinary Iowans was another step taken by public officials to divide people rather than bring them together, Martin said, one “not grounded in respect for the basic human dignity possessed by every person.”
“This is a moral failure against which we stand in opposition,” Martin said in the letter. “It is our duty to respect, support, and affirm anyone in our community targeted by these actions.”
While he hasn’t heard of any specific incidents that led him to feel the need to send the email to staff and students, Martin said he has heard concerns from campus community members on how the legislation will impact them and their loved ones. Feedback he’s received since he sent it has been mostly positive, he said.
Last year Drake University expanded its diversity, equity, inclusion and justice programming through the “Bulldogs Belong: Resilient and Thriving” initiative. The initiative would create new educational and experiential opportunities, provide expanded mental health services and use partnerships to train university staff in bias incident response.
Drake is an institution that works to make itself and the world better, Martin said, and one example he gave of that work during the Monday call was the university’s Ron and Jane Olson Center for Public Democracy.
The center, which received donations through the university’s campus-wide funding campaign, seeks to answer the question of how U.S. politics can get back, or get to, a place of civility and respect, Martin said. He added the center could be part of the solution to grounding politics in empathy, but it will take time.
“If we don’t act, nothing’s going to change. If we wait to start, the change is going to come later,” Martin said. “At some point, we can collectively drive change.”
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