The morning of Feb. 18 began like any other: students waking up and getting ready for classes. But for Olivia Oriho, alongside other students and resident assistants living in the University of Iowa’s identity-based Living Learning Communities, the day was disrupted by an email in her inbox announcing the university’s decision to no longer offer the Young, Gifted and Black LLC.

“We had all thought about the possibility that it was going to happen, but nobody was truly fearful of that happening,” Oriho, a first-year UI student currently living in the Young, Gifted and Black LLC housed in Petersen Residence Hall, said.

The UI’s LLCs are residence hall communities where students with similar interests or identities have the opportunity to live together and take courses related to their interests or identity. The LLCs provide a source of community and academic support for students, with All In serving LGBTQ+ students, Unidos serving Latine students, and Young, Gifted and Black serving Black and African-American students.

While the LLCs are open to all students, as described on the LLC website page of each identity-based LLC, the UI decided to eliminate the programs and has yet to comment on what this means for students currently living in the LLCs.

Chris Brewer, the public relations manager with the Office of Strategic Communication, wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan confirming the decision to eliminate the LLCs but had no further comments on the matter.

But students are not satisfied with the response.

With the email students received, their worries were confirmed as they were informed the three identity-based LLCs — All In, Unidos, and Young, Gifted and Black — would no longer be offered in the 2025-26 school year because of a letter released by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.

The “Dear Colleague” letter stated discrimination based on race, color, or national origin is illegal and explained how these discriminatory practices have been justified under the organizational framework Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights stated DEI programs, because of their consideration of race and identity, are discriminatory and educational institutions must dismantle these programs. This letter was linked in the email sent to students to explain the university’s decisions.

Lauren Jackson, a resident assistant in Rienow Residence Hall, also received the email from Housing and Dining. Jackson was a member of the discontinued public health LLC during her first year at the UI due to its proximity to Young, Gifted, and Black and the academic support it would provide her as the first in her family to enter the science and medicine field. As an RA, she was also included in the emails sent to those in the LLCs and said she was surprised and saddened by the news.

“I definitely was kind of shocked that things were happening so quickly,” Jackson said. “I thought there would at least be an effort to reframe and find another way to have these spaces available before talking about totally dismantling and canceling these Living Learning Communities.”

Jackson said she was sad the Young, Gifted and Black would be eliminated, especially considering it was only formed in 2016 and wouldn’t be able to celebrate a decade mark as a community space.

“I would have wanted more of a fight. Like, fight for your students, fight for your underrepresented population more,” Jackson said. “I understand this is the government, but are there ways to reframe? Are there ways to bring them back eventually? Like, these are the conversations that we’re wanting to see.”

For both Jackson and Oriho, the community spaces provided by the identity-based LLCs are crucial to maintain because they offer safe spaces for students of color and LGBTQ+ students in a school where, in 2022, 72.1 percent of the student population identifies as white, according to Data USA.

As Oriho explained, living in a community with people similar to you provides a sense of comfort and support. It offers a place where students don’t need to explain different aspects of their own culture, especially because many students of color and LGBTQ+ students face microaggressions daily.

“I feel like people ,in general, we want to act like things like racism or homophobia [or] discrimination is done with because people know what it is, but that’s still just not enough,” Oriho said. “It still exists in every day-to-day life.”

Jackson and Oriho are not the only students upset over the university not fighting to retain its LLCs and other programs, such as Iowa Edge, that benefit marginalized students.

On March 1, students gathered in the Pentacrest to protest not only the decision to eliminate the identity-based LLCs but also the targeting of free speech and resources which benefits students from marginalized communities by Iowa House File 2077, which classifies supporting certain groups as supporting terrorist organizations and instructs universities to disband student organizations supporting these groups. This protest was hosted by UI students from the Latino Student Union and Black Student Union in collaboration with other student organizations on campus.

Hundreds of students and members of the Iowa City community gathered and called for the UI to take action to protect its marginalized students.

RELATED: UI students rally in protest against anti-DEI policy implemented at UI

Kim Long, a graduate of the UI and a counselor at Cross City Counseling, carried a large sign with her partner that stretched across the Pentacrest and proclaimed in large black letters, “Anti Diversity = Pro Segregation.”

“This is terrifying, what’s happening,” Long said. “I really do think we throw around DEI like it’s a bad word, [but] the opposite of diversity is segregation. The opposite of equity is hoarding rights and resources from people. The opposite of inclusion is exclusion.”

Many students are concerned about the message sent by eliminating the LLCs and what this means for other cultural organizations on campus.

“It’s hard to find people who share the same community as you, so these LLCs make it easier for marginalized communities to come together and stand together,” Ishani Gutta, a second-year student at the UI, said.

Currently, anti-DEI legislation enacted by the Iowa Board of Regents and enforced by the UI is unable to touch student organizations, which have now become a valuable resource to students of color and LGBTQ+ students. Oriho, along with many others at the protest, said she believes these communities need to be highlighted and better supported by the university in the face of current change.

“[The UI] could be providing students with other areas right now,” Oriho said. “In that email, they just said, ‘We’re sorry this is happening. If you need to talk to anybody, go to UCS.’ But it’s like, instead of doing that, they could have been like, ‘Here are these spaces for people in these communities’ and supplied people with that information.”

Some of these organizations include those present at the protest on March 1: the Latino Student Union, the Black Student Union, Queer Trans People of Color, the Cross-Cultural Student Coalition, Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, Unidos, Multicultural Greek Council, and Undergraduate Student Government.

Currently, the cultural centers are still available to all students and include the Afro-American Cultural Center, or Afro House, Asian Pacific American Cultural Center, or APACC, Latino Native American Cultural Center, or LNACC, and Pride Alliance Center, or Pride House.

And while the actions by the university are currently affecting LGBTQ+, Latine, and Black students, Oriho was quick to quote Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came,” — written in 1946 illustrating the danger of staying complicit — to explain how decisions like the one made in the Iowa legislature affect everyone, not just the targeted groups.

Oriho and many others protesting this decision made by the UI call for those who made this decision to consider which side of history they’re on.

“Just because they’re not impacted by the legislation that they’re making,” Oriho said, “what happens when the rest of the people who are making these choices around them start making choices that negatively impact them.”