After UI’s diversity centers closed, one student artist left a thank you

When University of Idaho student Melanie Velazco Curiel presented her steel sculptures to students and faculty for her thesis, which honored the diversity and inclusion centers that shaped her college years, she had no idea she was about to walk into a meeting an hour later where the school’s president announced the centers were being closed.

Students were crying in that November meeting as UI President Scott Green told them that the Idaho State Board of Education wanted to scrap the centers supporting nonwhite, first -generation or LGBTQ+ students – and that it was only a matter of time before the university would have to follow suit.

Velazco Curiel was angry, she said. In her heart, she said, she somehow knew this would happen.

The idea of the sculptures she had created by welding bits and pieces of steel together as part of the college’s fine arts program came from the start of the battle by Idaho lawmakers to eliminate diversity statements and centers in public schools. They had succeeded before – universities are no longer allowed to use diversity statements in hiring processes, according to a recent law signed by Idaho Gov. Brad Little.

It caused Velazco Curiel to reflect on her journey of using the diversity centers, she said, but also to think about the students who have successfully overcome systemic obstacles and graduated with the guidance of the students and staff that work there.

“You know what metal is? A really resilient and hard -to -work -with material. And I thought, looking at all the staff from the offices, they reflect that,” she said. “They’re hard to break. They are resilient.”

On Wednesday, the education board voted unanimously to pass a resolution to effectively end diversity and inclusion centers across Idaho universities.

The resolution, which states that “institutions shall ensure that no student resource or student success center serves students based on DEI ideology” and that colleges can’t maintain or establish those centers, is set to be implemented across Idaho universities by June 30.

The same day, the sign that says “Student Diversity Center” in University of Idaho’s student union building was removed from above the doors. The pages which inform students about resources within the centers were taken off the school’s website.

One of the only centers left, which will be restructured to a violence prevention center, was the Women’s Center – a space that has served those in need of support or education on safe sex, stalking, domestic violence and more for 52 years.

As Velazco Curiel sat in the Women’s Center on Friday, she fiddled with her two sculptures she left there as an homage to it and the LGBTQ+ center. Other sculptures she dedicated to the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Black and African American Cultural Center, both of which were shut down this week.

The Native American Center will remain open on campus due to federal regulations.

“I decided to make these as a love letter and a ‘thank you’ to these offices because they’ve done so much for me, but also for a lot of other students,” she said. “A lot of students and staff are feeling a sense of defeat.”

Velazco Curiel is a first -generation college student of Mexican heritage, she said. She had a difficult time meeting students at the school until she began working in the Women’s Center. The notion that the centers are excluding others is inaccurate, she said Friday.

“I have seen quite a few men and straight people come into these centers, especially for our student diversity meetings,” she said. “There’s folks who are white, Asian, queer folks who come into those meetings, and we just mingle, let folks know what’s going on on campus.”

To her, the point of having the centers is to represent those who might be underrepresented in a small town like Moscow. When Velazco Curiel began trying to discover her career path in school, she found guidance at the school in the diversity offices because they gave her a tour, helped her apply and “know what to do.” She eventually chose to pursue computer science, but consistently felt isolated in a male-dominated field.

“I thought as a woman, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a woman. I can’t go in there. I’m not smart enough,’ ” she said.

So when she told the staff at the Women’s Center how she felt, it changed her perspective.

“They helped me realize that it’s not because you’re a woman,” she said. “You are not less than because you’re a woman.”

Once Velazco Curiel decided she no longer wanted a career in computer science, it was the staff at the Women’s Center who convinced her to follow her passions and dreams of creating art, she said, “and the rest was history.”

The sculptures for the LGBTQ+ Center and the Women’s Center will be given to the school’s library to be placed in a special collection, Velazco Curiel said. For the others, she is working with Dean of Students Blaine Eckles and the College of Art and Architecture to “find a more permanent place where they won’t be in a box and collecting dust.”

Even the school’s provost was so impressed by her talent, she said, that he asked her if she would make him a sculpture of a man playing a tuba.

After the fallout of the centers, Velazco Curiel went on to graduate this month. But she knew she wanted to do something a little extra.

As she was waiting in line to go up on stage to get her diploma, she tucked away a flag inside her gown she had painted. It read, “U of I needs DEI.”

“I thought, ‘OK, I have … to do something with this. It’s not just about me, it’s also for these folks who helped me a lot and for my fellow students,’ ” she said. “I’m not gonna disrupt anything. I just thought, ‘I’m just gonna say my peace and let everybody else have their moment.’ ”

Just before she walked on stage, she pulled out the flag. Velazco Curiel noticed a member of the administration lock eyes with her and look down.

“She saw I had something in my hand,” Velazco Curiel said, “and she tried to tug it away from me.”

In a short game of tug-of-war, Velazco Curiel told the person “not to worry about it,” and went on to flash the flag in front of the entire graduation ceremony. But no one did anything. UI President Scott Green greeted her on the way off the stage, and that was that.

“I was honestly very terrified doing it, because I very much thought I was going to get tackled by security or something, or my degree was going to get revoked,” she added. “But after I had taken my little photo with the diploma, I walked over and I got a lot of support. A lot of people were saying ‘thank you’ from the audience, those sitting closest to the seating area for the graduates and also from the faculty who were sitting in the back.”

As for the Women’s Center, staff will be moved around, but continue to serve students in a similar way, said the director of the center, Lysa Salsbury. Two staff members will be reassigned to the violence and prevention office, and Salsbury will continue teaching and remain involved, on her own time, in feminist grassroots organizations, she wrote in a Friday email.

Velazco Curiel looked around Friday at the art on the walls of the Women’s Center, the pamphlets of resources sitting on a shelf and all the little trinkets of buttons and pens sitting out on the table. She acknowledged it was bittersweet being there on its final day, as a few staff members looked on.

“The school always refers to us as a Vandal family,” she said. “Well, this is where I found my Vandal family.”