DEI in the Dorms: Part 1

Part 1 of a three-part series, DEI in the Dormitories

To visit the Instagram page of the University of Virginia’s residence advisors (RAs), who mentor dormitory students and enforce the rules, is to pass through a portal into a world of happy thoughts and contagious exuberance. The RAs, as they are known, exude positivity. In short TikTok-like clips, they express why they signed up for the job.

Allison, a third-year student, gives a two-handed wave and forms a heart sign as she shares what being an RA means to her. “I think about building connections and fostering a community within a dorm,” she says. It can be intimidating for first years to walk into a dormitory not knowing anyone, she explains, but by organizing teas or movie nights she can bring them together and “open up the conversation.”

The number of RAs is either 240 or 295, depending upon which UVA web page one consults. The slots are coveted because they provide free room, a meal plan, and leadership opportunities.

No doubt Allison’s enthusiasm is typical. But there is a dark side to UVA’s Housing & Residence experience. According to Bacon’s Rebellion’s sources, “woke” ideology permeates the program throughout: from the recruiting of the RAs, to their training, to the orientation and events they put on, to even the dormitories RAs are assigned to.

Critics say UVA’s mission has morphed from education to indoctrination. The process commences before students even enter a classroom. It starts with the dorm-room orientation they receive from their RAs, and it continues throughout the year.

On March 7 the Board of Visitors passed a resolution banning the use of racial preferences, abolishing the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and bringing all policies and practices into conformity with U.S. Civil Rights law. The mandate extends not only to admissions, hiring, promotion, financial aid and other aspects of student life, but also to housing. The Board gave President Jim Ryan 30 days — until April 7 — to provide an update on compliance.

About 6,800 undergraduate UVA students live in college-provided housing. On-Grounds residence is compulsory for first-year students. Many second-year students live on Grounds as well, and the Ryan administration has proposed a multimillion-dollar expansion of student housing with the eventual goal of making on-Grounds residence mandatory for all second-years.

Some observers fear that mandatory dorm residence will corral more students into an environment where they can be inculcated with politically “progressive” notions about race-, sex- and gender identity. The proposed expansion coincides with a crackdown in recent years on hazing and the shuttering of several fraternities, which provide housing to hundreds of students free from administrative indoctrination.

In theory, the RA program is student self-governed, much like the student council, student judiciary and honor council, and in theory it enjoys the same level of autonomy. In practice, the administration has a big influence over how it is run.

The Resident Advisors have a hierarchy. Ordinary working RAs report to supervisors known as senior advisors or SRs, who report to committee co-chairs. The co-chairs communicate with UVA administrative staffers called Residence Life Coordinators (RLCs) — there are six listed on the departmental website — who in turn report to an associate dean. At the apex of the housing/residence life bureaucracy is Gay Perez, an assistant vice president of student affairs.

Perez oversees more than three million square feet of residential building space housing. Over the past six years, notes her university profile, she has led a $300 million renovation and construction effort. The proposed dormitory expansion, also a nine-figure project, would expand her domain considerably.

The Housing & Residence Life website defines the program’s mission as creating “inclusive, welcoming communities where residents are empowered to engage their potential as scholars and leaders through self-governance and participation in their residential community.”

The mission statement is inoffensive… but deceptive. The concerns about “inclusiveness,” as we shall see, do not apply equally to all students. Some groups are more deserving of Resident Advisors’ care and attention than others.

(Bacon’s Rebellion reached out to Perez for an interview for this series but received no response.)

Written descriptions of UVA housing policies avoid the heavy-handed rhetoric of intersectional-oppression ideology, but programs encourage students to focus on their racial, ethnic, religious, sexual and gender identity, according to documents and videos we have reviewed. And those documents are only the tip of the iceberg. Our sources tell us that events and discussion groups, which leave no documentary trace, often veer into discussions of White privilege and systemic racism.

Whether intended or not, RA practices encourage students to form friendships with peers who share the same racial and ethnic “identity.” The obsession with identity boomeranged last year when, in assigning RAs to dormitories, Black RAs chose to cluster in the same buildings, leaving mostly White RAs in other dormitories by default. Aghast at the prospect of dormitories dominated by White RAs, the Housing & Residence staff stepped in — overruling the RAs’ tradition of self-governance — to restore racial mixture.

The self-siloing of students by racial/ethnic groups is a natural outgrowth of training that takes place before the fall semester begins, one RA told Bacon’s Rebellion.

“When we went to the training, it was crazy,” the RA said. “It was predominantly woke, especially in regards how to approach different backgrounds and genders. They harp a lot on peoples’ sexual identity, racial and ethnic identities. It’s almost to the point where you’re being indoctrinated into the DEI ideology instead of serving the residents.”

Conformity is enforced by a system in which RAs are told to document questionable actions and statements of their peers. The SafeGrounds system is used mainly to document administrative infractions. Sometimes, though, RAs are tagged for microaggressions and other violations of the woke ethos.

The difficulty in holding the Ryan administration accountable for its DEI policies is that the language of the University website and many of its documents were scrubbed of tell-tale DEI language even before the Board passed its DEI resolution. While words like “diversity,” “inclusive” and “belonging” crop up frequently in public-facing documents, the rhetoric of the oppressor/oppressed ideology in which they are embedded does not.

But take a dive beneath the website effluvia, and you get a very different picture. Disentangling DEI from the university culture that has developed over many years will be a formidable challenge.

In part 2 of this series, we will take a closer look at how Residential Advisors are recruited and trained