Missouri State Rep: ‘You shouldn't be forced to make a statement on diversity to get into a good college’

Missouri State Representative Chris Lonsdale spoke about state efforts to combat DEI in an interview with Campus Reform.

Lonsdale, who attended the University of Missouri, located in Columbia, spoke about his experience attending the school during a period of unrest starting in 2015 that involved, among other occurrences, a professor intimidating a student journalist trying to record what was happening on campus. “You definitely got the feeling that conservatives weren’t welcome. And that we were certainly the minority on campus,” he said. 

[RELATED: Mizzou cuts ties with admin who accosted student journalists]

“I think there still hasn’t been a whole lot of . . . meaningful reforms . . . I think there’s just less headlines,” the state representative continued.

Lonsdale stated: “I definitely think that you have to be guarded with what you say and who you say it to. Because there will be nefarious people that want to take you down or construe something and take it out of context.” Lonsdale cautioned conservative students to “know who you’re talking to, especially in the age of the internet, where you’re in a group chat, you share a meme, or you do something that can be construed in a bad way that personally, reputationally hurts you.”

Speaking of efforts in the Missouri state house to combat DEI, Lonsdale mentioned an effort to pass a bill in 2023 to ban diversity statements in higher education and added: “We’re definitely taking looks at that type of stuff and [seeing] what we can do to basically not have ideological enforcers of the Democrat Party within . . . the higher education system.”

State legislators are considering “how do we sculpt state law to try to limit . . . ideological purity tests in academia and in government,” he said.

[RELATED: Ben Shapiro had a ‘blast’ with leftist students shaken by his appearance at FSU]

Asked about his other concerns regarding higher education in Missouri, Lonsdale also criticized the lack of due process on school campuses, saying: “We have these almost kangaroo courts for student conduct, where someone can accuse you of something, and it’s totally outside of the police. And it’s all governed within the University of Missouri System. And there has been a lot of troubling reports of students getting expelled, students getting suspended, and they didn’t really have due process rights.”

“We need to look at DEI statements as a form of gatekeeping on college employment applications. And we also need to be looking at diversity statements for college admissions. You shouldn’t be forced to make a statement on diversity to get into a good college,” Lonsdale concluded.