Brad Mortensen, the president of Weber State University, found himself earlier this year wedged between opposing forces after deciding to close the Center for Multicultural Excellence in favor of a series of identity-based cultural centers.
Mortensen envisioned the cultural centers as places for students of color to connect with campus staff who could direct them to academic counseling, remediation services, and cultural programming. It was central to his goal of increasing the stagnant enrollment and retention rates of Latino students so that Weber could be recognized by the federal government as an “emerging Hispanic-serving institution” and eventually qualify for millions of dollars in federal grants.
“The centers were where we would do a lot of warm handoffs between students seeking help and the services that exist on the campus,” Mortensen said.
By the time Weber State, located in Ogden, Utah, cut the ribbon on its first cultural center, Utah passed a law that banned public colleges from engaging in a host of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, including offices that promote “differential treatment based on a person’s race, sex, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, or gender identity.”
Mortensen would come to interpret the law to mean that the cultural centers could not identify themselves by the race or ethnic group they were designed to serve and believed that the centers could not function as a place for students seeking academic services. Weber, in his estimates, couldn’t staff the cultural centers. And he also believed the programming within the centers that highlighted ethnic and racial disparities would be in violation of the new law.
Mortensen decided to shut down the existing Black Cultural Center in late June and canceled plans for the creation of additional cultural centers. In their place, the college created a “Student Success Center.”
Mortensen’s decision to close the cultural centers and replace them with a place that didn’t explicitly celebrate multiculturalism or racial or ethnic identity angered students and local politicians and triggered a campus protest.
The cultural centers provided spaces where our diverse body of students could share their own struggles in a space where they felt understood.
“The cultural centers provided spaces where our diverse body of students could share their own struggles in a space where they felt understood,” said Jordan Marshall, a student and member of Students Aligned for Equity, which advocates for equity and inclusion at Weber State. “Many students worked hard for these centers to be opened, and now many more incoming students will never have the opportunity to indulge in that lost comfort.”
Mortensen is now tasked with figuring out how to continue recruiting and retaining Latino students to Weber State using colorblind strategies.
HSIs were formed under the 1965 Higher Education Act and qualify colleges with Hispanic enrollment exceeding 25 percent for Title III and Title V grants that fund academic programs, infrastructure, and staffing.
Hispanics now account for more than one in five U.S. residents attending a postsecondary-granting institution — it was one in eight in 2010 — according to data collected by The Chronicle. The number of HSIs in the last 15 years has expanded to 465.
In the last decade, the Latino population in Utah grew by more than 20 percent, according to a study by the University of Utah. Ogden has been the epicenter of that growth. The city is more than one-third Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Weber State’s Latino enrollment is just 12 percent of the total student body, according to data provided by the college. Only 40 percent graduate. Increasing Latino enrollment to 15 percent would qualify the college to be an “emerging HSI.” Mortensen said that becoming an HSI “is an outward signal to our Hispanic community, ‘Hey, you are welcome here and we want to support you.’”
Latino students struggle in college for a variety of reasons, experts say. They are often pulled away from classwork by work obligations and roles as family caretakers for parents, grandparents, or siblings. In Utah, Latinos are twice as likely as whites to live in poverty, according to data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Many of these students are working more than 30 hours a week, many of them are providing care for their parents and grandparents. Many Latino students are low income, or housing insecure, or food insecure,” said Robert Montoya, associate vice president of partner success at InsideTrack, a minority-student advocacy group. “If you are an emerging HSI, as opposed to a full HSI, you don’t always have the resources to support these student needs.”
For more than two decades, Weber State’s approach to serving minority students and the college’s growing Latino population was focused around the Center for Multicultural Excellence, where students could gather for cultural programming, consult with staff members on challenges they were facing at college, and be directed to student services available across the campus.
However, Black students said Weber State’s strategy of operating a single center for cultural programming didn’t meet their needs.
In 2021, the Weber State University chapters of the NAACP and Black Scholars United were denied access to host an event at the Center for Multicultural Excellence because, administrators said, neither organization was sponsored by the college.
Black students began to demand a dedicated space, similar to the Black Cultural Center at nearby University of Utah.
Weber State conducted a climate report on the Center for Multicultural Excellence, which found that the centers “failed, indisputably to both support and meet the needs of multicultural students from 2010 to 2021”; lacked “oversight and accountability"; were “driven by sentiment at the cost of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability”; and showed no empirical evidence that the center had “any impact on multicultural recruitment, retention, persistence, graduation, or success.”
With the report in hand, Mortensen began to talk to students about how they felt about the center. Some agreed with the assessment. Others did not.
“We had a session with multiple Latino students saying no, don’t take away the CME,” he said. “But I had just as many meetings with students who like the new direction with the dedicated cultural spaces. We stepped more into the side of creating spaces that are unique.”
The Latino cultural center would have been fine to have for me and other Latino students. But it’s not a replacement for the multicultural center because that was for everyone.
In the fall of 2022, Mortensen announced he was closing the Center for Multicultural Excellence and opening five identity-based cultural centers that would be collectively known as the Centers for Belonging and Cultural Engagement. These five centers would serve Black and African American, Hispanic and Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Pan-Asian students. It was also opening the Dream Center to support undocumented students.
The shift from a centralized operation to multiple identity-specific centers confused many on campus, according to Andrea Garavito Martinez, an assistant professor at Weber State. “Many of the Latino students I spoke with saw these changes as an alphabet soup,” Martinez said. “They were more interested in having a place where they could meet as Latino students that felt welcoming to their white friends. For them, belonging is less about identity than being in communities of shared interest.”
Brianna Bugarin, a junior at Weber State, welcomed the new cultural centers but did not want them built at the expense of the Center for Multicultural Excellence. “The Latino cultural center would have been fine to have for me and other Latino students. But it’s not a replacement for the multicultural center because that was for everyone,” she said.
When Utah lawmakers passed H.B. 261 in January, Weber State officials decided to wait for instruction from the Utah Board of Higher Education on how to proceed. “I thought it was important to continue to show support to our students of color even in the face of the new state law,” Mortensen said.
The Black Cultural Center hosted its first event two weeks after the law was signed.
Stacy Bernal, a Weber State graduate and member of the Ogden school board served on an advisory committee assisting with the launch of the centers. “The question in the committee of how H.B. 261 was going to impact the centers was asked, and we were told the college was going to be fine and the cultural centers were going to open,” Bernal said.
In May, Bernal learned that the college would no longer hold commencement ceremonies dedicated to each ethnic or racial group, and that the plan for creating multiple cultural centers was going to be canceled.
The college transferred 13 employees from the cultural centers to other positions. All but one of the former DEI staffers remained at Weber State, albeit in roles like admissions and student services, according to Weber State officials.
The college hired Joel Berrien to lead its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts just before the lawmakers passed H.B. 261. Since then, his job title changed from Belonging and Inclusive Programs Manager to Training Lead for Student Success.
Berrien led the transformation of what was “diversity week” to “unity week.” Barred from mentioning racial disparities, this year’s program on food deserts framed the problem as universal before making mention that some groups are more prone to experiencing food insecurity.
I have not been shy about continuing to pursue the goal of becoming an emerging HSI even in the wake of this new law.
“You introduce a concept of food insecurity and food deserts and how it impacts people’s health and then explain how some folks are disproportionately affected by this, but these challenges are not exclusive to other groups,” Berrien explained.
In the fall, the college opened the Student Success Center.
For Bugarin, it doesn’t feel as welcoming. “I think people of color see the Student Success Center and they don’t realize they are still welcome to come in,” she said. “I saw Latino faces in the multicultural center ... people who looked like me, and they would welcome me and relate and could help me with a problem.”
In early December, students, members of the Ogden chapter of the NAACP and local political leaders gathered on campus to support a demonstration organized by Students Aligned for Equity. The protestors held a mock funeral to mourn the closure of the centers.
“Not having these cultural centers that offer them a sense of belonging just creates another barrier to Latino students,” Bernal said.
Protesters carried a casket across campus symbolizing the death of the centers. “The main message we wanted to send by this demonstration is that these centers mattered deeply,” said Marshall, who helped organize the protest. “By holding the funeral, we hoped to show the university and the legislators that people do care about these spaces.”
This fall, Weber State’s Board of Trustees approved an amended five-year strategic plan. The new plan scrubs the mention of equity and inclusion prominent in the plan that Mortensen guided five years ago.
But the plan does include the goal of Weber State pursuing emerging HSI status. Mortensen acknowledges that there might be some pushback to openly courting Latino students, considering the new anti-DEI law. None of that has caused him to consider changing course at Weber State.
“I have not been shy about continuing to pursue the goal of becoming an emerging HSI even in the wake of this new law,” he said.
