West Virginia's 'Restoring Sanity Act' would redirect money from DEI brainwashing to 'merit scholarships'

West Virginia public officials are considering a bill to ban public funding for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in state colleges and universities.  

Senate Bill 870, also known as the “Restoring Sanity Act,” would redirect money in public colleges and universities away from DEI personnel to instead support “merit scholarships for lower-income and middle-income students, first generation college students, or to reduce tuition and mandatory fees for resident students.”

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The bill, sponsored by Republican State Senator Patricia Rucker, currently awaits consideration in the West Virginia Judiciary Committee as of Feb. 26, according to the legislature’s website. 

The “Restoring Sanity Act” would ban public colleges and universities in the state from promoting concepts such as “social justice, intersectionality, neo-pronouns, heteronormativity, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege, critical race theory, and any related formulation of these concepts.” 

The legislation also targets DEI in other ways, prohibiting public colleges and universities from requiring diversity statements from applicants, and stopping these schools from giving “preferential consideration to an applicant, student, staff member, or faculty member due to any opinion expressed or action taken in support of another individual or a group of individuals on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

Campus Reform has previously covered the presence and influence of diversity trainings across the country. For example, from February to June of last year, New York University hosted six monthly “anti-racist” workshops for “white public school parents.” Attendees were taught how to deal with “internalized white superiority,” among other topics.

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In May 2021, West Virginia University’s “LGBTQ+ Center” arranged an “anti-racism training” to “raise awareness of the intersections of race, color, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The Idaho State Senate is considering a bill similar to West Virginia’s, as Campus Reform previously reported, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed similar legislation into law in 2022. 

Campus Reform has reached out to Senator Rucker and West Virginia’s public universities and colleges for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.