{
"type": "rich",
"version": "1.0",
"provider_name": "Action Network",
"provider_url": "https://actionnetwork.org",
"html": "",
"author_name": "AFT-Wisconsin",
"author_url": "https://actionnetwork.org/groups/aft-wisconsin",
"title": "Local 3535 Statement on UWM Student Center Mergers",
"thumbnail_url": "https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/forms/photos/000/783/874/normal/local-3535-logo.png",
"description": "The AFT-WI Local 3535 of UW-Milwaukee and UW-Parkside stands in solidarity with the students opposing the merger of UWM's student cultural and resource centers. This decision — made amid manufactured austerity and without meaningful student input — is a stark demonstration of what happens when higher education is stripped of collective governance and institutional courage. Universities like UWM face real financial pressures, but we cannot respond to the crisis by dismantling the foundation of student success. Merging these centers sends a clear and damaging message to UWM's current and future students: that their identities, communities, and histories are irrelevant. This is especially unconscionable at an institution where nearly half of all undergraduates are first-generation college students and one in three come from underrepresented groups. International students — already navigating political and economic precarity — are among the most vulnerable and depend on the individualized, culturally specific support that only these centers can provide. These centers were won by students, not handed to them. Over fifty years ago, UWM students recognized that their survival on campus required organized, sustained struggle. In 1968, the United Black Student Front forced the university to establish the Black Student Union and the Center for Afro-American Culture. In 1970, students occupied the chancellor's office to demand the creation of the Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute (now the Roberto Hernández Center) while LGBTQ+ students founded the Homosexual Freedom League that same year. In 1972, students built the Campus Women's Center, which became the Women's Resource Center. Southeast Asian refugees and their children—many first-generation UWM students—worked to establish the Southeast Asian Student Academic Services in 1991. LGBTQ+ students finally won their own space in 2001 with the formation of the LGBTQ+ Resource Center. Students have fought for disability justice on campus for decades. While the Military and Veterans Resource Center and the First-Generation Resource Center did not join our community until 2012, their equal importance cannot be understated. Every one of these centers carries the memory of that struggle. Erasing them does not resolve an administrative budget crisis; it erases a legacy. UWM's administration may suggest that a hostile federal climate justifies this decision, but that justification has already collapsed. On February 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education conceded the end of its "Dear Colleague" directive, withdrawing the federal threat to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at schools and higher education institutions nationwide. UWM acted preemptively, and now the pretext is gone. As River Falls political scientist Neil Kraus has documented, state policy in Wisconsin remains overwhelmingly pro-DEI. If the federal threat has passed and state law supports these programs, we must ask plainly: whose agenda do UW administrators serve when they proceed with this merger anyway? This pattern is not isolated. Across the UW System, administrators are exploiting this political moment to cut vital faculty positions and programs under the cover of austerity. UWM's merger of the student centers is part of that broader strategy, and it must be named as such. We will not pretend that 2026 is an easy time to find hope. Many of our colleagues feel exhausted, outmaneuvered, and afraid. We understand that feeling. But despair is not a strategy, and surrender is not neutral — it has consequences for the students who will arrive on this campus next fall looking for a place that reflects who they are. We do not promise immediate victory, but we promise to stand. We promise to fight. And we invite every student, faculty member, staff member, and community ally to stand and fight alongside us, as hundreds have done before. We call upon UWM Chancellor Gibson to exercise the full authority of his office and reverse this decision in accordance with the demands of UWM students.",
"url": "https://actionnetwork.org/forms/local-3535-statement-on-uwm-student-center-mergers"
}