The University of Maryland’s diversity and inclusion office website no longer displays 25 critical issues that Black student leaders identified to administration in 2020, The Black Explosion reported on Thursday.
As of Thursday, the website displays two paragraphs mentioning the demands’ existence. But the website no longer shows a dashboard of the demands and their progress.
After George Floyd’s murder and the rise of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, university president Darryll Pines asked five Black students at this university to create a list of 25 demands for this university to address, The Diamondback previously reported. The demands included hiring more Black faculty, creating a Black career center and ending campus police militarization.
In 2021, this university’s diversity and inclusion office published the dashboard, which tracked the demands and the university’s progress.
[UMD sees about 26% increase in Black faculty from 2021 to 2023]
“We are in the process of reviewing and updating the content originally presented on the dashboard,” this university’s diversity and inclusion office wrote in a statement to The Diamondback Thursday.
According to an archived version of the website dated March 8, 21 of the demands were marked as completed or sustained, and four were in progress. One ongoing demand included redistributing University of Maryland Police funds to the Nyumburu Cultural Center and the African American studies department.
The removal of these demands comes during heightened scrutiny of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in institutions across the nation after U.S. President Donald Trump entered office in January.
“It is disheartening to hear about the removal of these 25 critical issues,” the Black Student Union wrote in a statement to The Diamondback. “To no longer have them up in a public place for others to become aware of these issues definitely is a step back.”
[Diamondback Special Project: Behind the 25 Demands]
The Black Student Union is “deeply saddened” by the removal of the demands, but remains resilient in its “fight and determination for every Black individual,” the statement read.
As of Thursday, the website reads that this university has worked with more than 30 Black student organizations to “better understand their goals and the issues they raised.”
“Since [2020], the university has worked to create more student spaces, implement standardized and streamlined student-response protocols, improve career counseling resources, and broaden our student recruitment efforts across Maryland counties and cities,” the website read.
This university did not immediately respond to The Diamondback’s request for comment.
