{"id":2466,"date":"2025-06-17T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T09:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2026-05-01T06:04:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:04:02","slug":"follow-up-communication-on-dei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/follow-up-communication-on-dei\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow-up communication on DEI"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>\n<p>Dear Campus Community:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>To follow up on my campus-wide email from last week&nbsp;concerning the state law and federal executive orders regarding DEI,&nbsp;I wanted to provide additional information on a couple of issues of concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In regard to the impact on student scholarships,\u00a0the University could no longer award scholarships that were diversity-based as defined in\u00a0the state\u2019s Public Chapter 245, and\u00a0as a result,\u00a0all unawarded funds were immediately suspended\u00a0by our institution.\u00a0However, our intent is to honor\u00a0scholarship\u00a0awards made prior to this new law, and\u00a0<strong>students who have been notified of an award should expect to receive that aid this coming year.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moving forward, we will continue to explore the opportunities available to best support the needs of our students. With legal challenges to a number of the Executive Orders and federal agency directives, we have chosen to suspend future awards until we have greater clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, we are still reviewing our programs and activities to ensure\u00a0they are in compliance. I anticipate we will have this analysis completed in the next few weeks and, if required, will take appropriate action at that time. Until then, unless you have received specific instructions or notification of any change, please continue normal operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I recognize that there are more questions than answers at this time, which can be unsettling.\u00a0We are committed to resolving these issues as quickly as possible, balancing the needs of our community with the requirements of these new laws. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you for your patience and understanding during this challenging time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sincerely,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sidney A. McPhee<br>President<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Campus Community: To follow up on my campus-wide email from last week&nbsp;concerning the state law and federal executive orders regarding DEI,&nbsp;I wanted to provide additional information on a couple of issues of concern. In regard to the impact on student scholarships,\u00a0the University could no longer award scholarships that were diversity-based as defined in\u00a0the state\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3242,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions\/3242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}