Published: December 8, 2025
In May of 2025, the Equity, Inclusion, and Community Impact (EICI) office was closed, following Dr. Idella Glenn’s retirement in late April. The volunteer-driven Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Council (IDEC) was dissolved shortly after. Since then, concerns have been raised over transparency and the university’s dedication to marginalized community members. With the announcement of IDEC’s replacement, the President’s Committee on Community Access and Belonging (PC-CAB), USM, and the president’s office may face an uphill battle rebuilding community trust and keeping the promises made to affected groups. USM’s leadership maintains that these changes are meant to further empower the work that Dr. Idella Glenn’s office and the more than 100 faculty, staff, and student volunteers did through IDEC. Those formerly and currently involved in that work have divided opinions, however.
The work of IDEC and the EICI office was established in the wake of 2020’s tensions, with former USM President Glenn Cummings naming Dr. Idella Glenn the Vice President of EICI. Both this office and council focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work, as it is commonly referred to. IDEC’s 2020 charter described the council as “an action-oriented council composed of students, faculty, and staff.” Its mission statement goes on to say that “IDEC partners with University leadership, departments, and organizations to engage our community in creating and sustaining a safe, inclusive, diverse, anti-oppressive, anti-racist university for people of all identities. IDEC works to create equitable structures, policies, practices, and programming.” IDEC was designed to remain independent from the president’s office, supported by staff in Dr. Glenn’s EICI office as a liaison for marginalized groups to the university. While EICI was made up of university employees, IDEC was made up entirely of volunteers. Any student, faculty, or staff member was able to volunteer with IDEC, and transparency was a priority for the council and its committees.
These committees each worked on various areas of concern at USM, seeking input from the people affected. The Curriculum Committee reviewed the curriculum, which is important for many fields. This work has sometimes been referred to as “decolonizing curriculum,” addressing biases like white supremacy, Eurocentrism, misinformation about minorities, and bigotry. The Policy, Student Experience, Communications and Resources, and Hiring and Retention committees all worked in their respective areas and with each other, addressing where the university may have been failing to support members of this community. This included IDEC’s “mini grants,” totaling $5,000, given for community proposals. Based on the applications received last year, there were almost $22,000 in qualifying proposals that IDEC could not cover with its budget. One person expressed that IDEC was a space for community members to raise a concern and see something done about it, speaking to its task-driven nature. Ben Reed, who worked as a graduate assistant with Dr. Glenn in the EICI office, spoke to the combined mission as “harm reduction at a policy level.” It was “providing space for addressing bigotry/identity-based discrimination, building infrastructure, and addressing policies that let it happen.” Many groups got support from IDEC and EICI, including international students, faculty, and staff, as well as those asking for improvements to gender-neutral infrastructure and bias training. IDEC’s independence gave it the freedom to challenge policies and practices at the university, but that independence and barriers to its work brought several challenges.
Collaboration began in January to address these concerns, five months before Dr. Glenn’s retirement. USM’s current President, Jaqueline Edmonson, stated in an email that “prior to Dr. Glenn’s departure, we were already considering what the next ‘chapter’ of IDEC would be, as those on the committee were looking for a new structure and goals.” IDEC’s limitations had become clear to some involved, mostly around funding and support for programs and proposals. Committees launched successful pilot programs that were not renewed, proposed policy changes were not adopted, and concern for IDEC’s limited resources grew. Dr. Edmonson said in the same email that this motivated the changes to the structure, stating, “My priority will be funding programming support, mini-grants, and accessibility. If additional funding is available, the next priority will be student employment.” This concern was also heightened by the ending of the CARES Act funding, which made up the majority of IDEC’s funding and a portion of the EICI’s funding. This communication also spoke to an additional concern: student involvement and volunteer participation. As IDEC was purely volunteer-driven, some found it difficult to dedicate the unpaid time to this work. This was the case for faculty, staff, and students, and this specifically limited student involvement at times. Over the next several months, members of IDEC’s Steering Committee, current and former members, and the president’s office met to discuss the new structure that would become PC-CAB. Then, in late April, Dr. Glenn retired.
In May, the other EICI employees were laid off, and the office was dissolved. One person described this as a “total surprise,” another stated it was never discussed, and “blindsided” people involved in both EICI and IDEC. Ben Reed, who saw the DEI work he did in the office as important in the face of federal pressures, described this as “a slap in the face and a punch in the gut.” Though Dr. Edmonson claimed in the email announcing Dr. Glenn’s retirement that “[w]e are in communication with staff impacted by this change,” the full closure of EICI and the layoffs were not communicated. Reed stated he was not aware at all until an email went out to the wider community announcing the closure. “The biggest part of this story that I thought I could tell is that they dissolved the office and took away my job in an email to everybody – not just the people in the office, but everybody,” said Reed. In response to a question about this closure and communication, Dr. Edmonson said “[w]hile many structures and options were considered, the office of EICI ultimately closed, and staff were informed in accordance with their bargained rights.” During a process when communication and collaboration were claimed to be a priority, people affected by these layoffs and other office closures expressed how this inspired frustration and anger, and that more notice should have been given.
The new committee, PC-CAB, met for the first time in October after a selection process for new members. Opinions from some former IDEC members were split on this new structure: some were selected to be a part of the new committee, some were not selected despite being nominated, and some chose not to get involved in the committee due to a variety of concerns. The most significant concern was the move away from IDEC’s independent, decentralized volunteer model to selected appointees. Some felt discouraged by the structural changes and the move away from explicit reference to DEI values, while others felt it was still important to continue the work even if the language changed. Student involvement was also brought up as a concern, as only one student was appointed. This was discussed in the committee’s first meeting as the focus of their efforts going forward.
Hadriane Hatfield, former IDEC member and current PC-CAB member, expressed that “the success of the committee will depend on the quality of communication and relationships between it and the campus community, equitable access to service on the committee/subcommittees, and dedication of material, financial resources to create needed change.” Dr. Edmonson stated this week that PC-CAB “allows the committee to have direct access to me and my Cabinet, and it allows for other important connections – like the connection between community, access and belonging and the recently launched President’s Forum on American Democracy, which has focused its inaugural year on the idea of pluralism.”
Another concern is the move away from DEI-related language, including the exclusion of the word “diversity” from most of these communications. This year, the federal government increased pressure on federally funded institutions to abandon language it claims is “wasteful” and “shameful discrimination.” Legal scholars have argued against this, saying that DEI programs like IDEC are legally defensible and necessary to uphold Civil Rights-related obligations. University leadership has repeatedly stated these changes have not been influenced by federal pressure, but these changes follow a national pattern. The Portland Press Herald reported on this “national trend” prompting Maine schools to preemptively change this language back in May, before these changes happened at USM. Some concerns for this specific wording stem from one of the earliest examples of a non-DEI community office, Brigham Young University’s “Office of Belonging.” Established in 2021 as a religious alternative to “the world’s DEI,” the office has repeatedly faced backlash for ignoring the needs of queer students. At the same event announcing the office, religious leader and former BYU president Jeffrey R. Holland gave his infamous “musket fire” speech on campus, criticizing internal “friendly fire” pressure to improve the university’s restrictions on LGBTQ+ students and to take up metaphorical “muskets” to defend the institution’s stance on marriage.
Additionally, a 2023 policy brief from the Maine Policy Institute, a conservative think-tank and publisher of The Maine Wire, discussed these offices. It recommended both the dissolution of IDEC and a refocus of policy language away from diversity, equity, and inclusion and towards the more neutral “plurality,” “fairness,” and “welcoming” instead. It is unclear if this brief had any influence on the university’s policy decisions.
Though many feel worried about the future of this work, people involved and working elsewhere on campus still feel a strong commitment to the missions of IDEC and the EICI office. Dr. Edmonson remarked that “[e]ach of us has a responsibility to help create an environment where people feel welcomed and experience a sense of belonging.” Whether or not that effort in the new structure succeeds remains to be seen. Marginalized students, faculty, and staff are counting on that promise being genuine.
