University of Iowa’s Undergraduate Student Government, or USG, passed a resolution to send a letter to state officials expressing their disapproval toward the university’s decision to dissolve identity-based Learning Living Communities, or LLC’s, earlier this year.
The letter will be sent to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s U.S. Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn, and Randy Feenstra, and the Iowa Department of Education.
The university’s decision eliminated the Young, Gifted and Black LLC, the Unidos LLC, and the All In LGBTQ+ LLC, all located in UI residence halls designed to provide communities for students of similar interests and backgrounds to live together.
The resolution was voted on and approved Dec.9. It is expected to be sent via email within the next week, according to Ellyss Davis, the justice and equity committee chair for USG. The opinion in the resolution will also be posted on USG’s Instagram.
The letter argues the UI’s notice to students on Feb. 14 provided too little time for students in the eliminated LLCs to readjust their housing plans, considering they had a window from Feb. 17-24 to pay their housing dues for the next year.
“They told us in not a feasible enough time span to figure out where students were going to live for the next year,” Davis said.
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Davis said the letter also cites the UI’s strategic plan, pointing out how the university previously acknowledged that minority students who felt underrepresented and participated in LLCs had a higher fall-to-fall retention rate than those who did not.
“We just want to be able to see that at the University of Iowa, the student government is taking a stance,” Davis said. “We’re the highest functioning level of a student organization in the university. We want to represent our students as best as we can.”
Davis said the ultimate goal of USG’s letter would be for the recipients to assist the university in reinstating the identity-based LLCs.
“Most of all, we want allies from anybody we can get,” she said. “We are a state school, so we’re working under what the state wants. We want to make sure we have allies at the end of the day.”
Davis said reinstating the LLCs is essential for sustaining the university’s ability to provide students with spaces to celebrate their diversity, arguing that diversity extends far beyond the color of a student’s skin.
“Diversity is, did you grow up on a farm and did I grow up in a big city? Do you like this thing or do you not like that thing?” she said. “It has so many different definitions, and so using that and being able to create those definitions for anybody who wants to be involved in the community is important.”