Marie Vibbert logged in to her Case Western Reserve University work account on March 19 to find an early-morning email with the subject line: “Confidential and Urgent: Removing scholarship pages from the College of Arts and Sciences website.”
The email, sent by a staff member in the university’s marketing department, asked her to remove three web pages.
Vibbert, the webmaster for the College of Arts and Sciences, clicked through the three links. All contained information about diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships.
“They said that the university was under a lot of pressure and that they needed to do this legally. This university could be sued for having DEI language,” Vibbert said of conversations with leadership when she asked for an explanation.
The university, through a spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.
Vibbert refused to comply with the order to remove the web pages.
“You cave into these demands, and you're no different from the other side,” Vibbert said. “This is very against Case’s values… We have a very diverse student population, especially in the graduate schools, and it's like we're throwing our core audience under the bus for people in power who don't care one way or another about us.”
Her boss removed the pages, and she was told to share access to the website with the university's marketing team.
A week after the web pages were removed, the university announced it was shuttering its DEI office. That move came in response to President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion in the public and private sectors. Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from schools using any DEI measures, already prompting universities to scale back or shutter DEI offices and programs, including the Ohio State University, the University of Akron and Kent State University.
In a letter to students and staff, President Eric Kaler said the university would instead establish the “Office for Campus Enrichment and Enlightenment."
“This office will work to connect our community and offer programming that aligns with its new mission: Enriching our campus life through building community, active engagement, mindful learning and transformative civil dialogue,” Kaler wrote. The same vice president who led the DEI office now oversees the new initiative.
Before the university announced the DEI office closure, Vibbert posted on Facebook about the request for her to remove DEI scholarship pages from the school's website.
The reaction was swift.
Dozens of people shared the post within a few hours, and Vibbert said she was quickly called in for a meeting with her department head and a representative of the communications department. She said she was threatened with termination if she did not delete the post.
Vibbert said she ultimately agreed to take down her Facebook post because she feared losing her job and health insurance. She said she has a chronic illness.
Vibbert said she was concerned about repercussions for criticizing the university in this story, but a spokesperson for CWRU told Ideastream there is no policy that restricts employees’ freedom of speech or subjects them to termination or punitive measures if they speak publicly against university policies or actions.
Vibbert said the university explicitly told her she would not be fired for failing to comply with the initial request. She said the fact that her boss took the pages down, and the marketing team now has access, is fine by her.
“I can't be their conscience,” Vibbert said.
"I can only be my own conscience."
The pages included a list of scholarships and grants available to minority students, information about a chemistry doctoral scholarship for underrepresented minority students and a memorial scholarship fund for the late Frederica Ward, a “beloved department assistant” in the English department at CWRU who passed away at the age of 48 in 2010. The endowment was intended to provide financial assistance to African American undergraduate students in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Ideastream asked a spokesperson for Case Western Reserve University what happened to the money in that endowment and the scholarships outlined in the other web pages that were taken down. The university declined to comment.
Ideastream recovered the deleted pages using the Wayback Machine, an initiative of the nonprofit Internet Archive. The website captures previous versions of websites and builds a digital library. All three links last appeared to be live on March 19, the day Vibbert was asked to pull them. They now give a "404 error" when one clicks on the university's site.
Shortly after CWRU closed its DEI office, Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law a controversial bill, Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Kirtland Republican Jerry Cirino, that similarly calls on colleges and universities to end their DEI programs.
“I don't think that it's going to protect the university,” Vibbert said of its decision to discontinue the DEI office and scrub its website of DEI references. “I think that this is nothing but a delay maneuver before they ask for something else and something worse and cut our funding anyway.”
Vibbert is not alone in her concerns. University staff and students have spoken out against the state's new DEI mandate, citing concerns about class instruction and opportunities for marginalized communities.
There have been protests at campuses across the state, including at Kent State University, Ohio University and the University of Akron. At CWRU, students recently organized a walkout demanding the DEI office be restored.
That growing discontent among students and staff could affect university operations and potential donors, Vibbert speculated. She said she’s heard from former classmates who plan to pull their alumni donations.
“I'm very angry about it, and people are like, ‘Oh gosh, you're so brave.’ And I'm like, 'This isn't that brave,'” Vibbert said. “It's not like someone's holding a gun to our head. They're holding money to our head. And we've got to stop caving for something as unimportant as your bottom line.”
