CU’s Colorado Springs campus thought it could avoid Trump’s education crackdown. Here’s what happened

By BYRON TAU The Associated Press COLORADO SPRINGS Administrators at the University of Colorado s campus in Colorado Springs thought they stood a solid chance of dodging the Trump administration s offensive on higher tuition Located on a picturesque bluff with a stunning view of Pikes Peak the school is far removed from the Ivy League colleges that have drawn President Donald Trump s ire Preponderance of its students are commuters getting degrees while holding down full-time jobs Students and faculty alike describe the university which is in a conservative part of a blue state as politically subdued if not apolitical That optimism was misplaced An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of emails from school leaders as well as interviews with students and professors reveals that school leaders teachers and students soon ascertained themselves in the Republican administration s crosshairs forcing them to approach what they described as an unprecedented and haphazard degree of change Whether Washington has downsized executive departments clawed back or launched investigations into diversity programs or campus antisemitism the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs has confronted multiple of the same challenges as elite universities across the nation The school lost three major federal grants and exposed itself under assessment by the Trump s Instruction Department In the hopes of avoiding that scrutiny the university renamed websites and job titles all while dealing with pressure from students faculty and staff who required the school to take a more combative stance Uncertainty is compounding the school s chancellor communicated faculty at a February meeting according to minutes of the session And the speed of which orders are coming has been a bit of a shock The college declined to make any administrators available to be interviewed A spokesman required the AP to make clear that any professors or students interviewed in this story were speaking for themselves and not the institution Several faculty members also petitioned for anonymity either because they did not have tenure or they did not want to call unnecessary attention to themselves and their scholarship in the current political ecosystem Like our colleagues across higher development we ve spent considerable time working to understand the new directives from the federal cabinet the chancellor Jennifer Sobanet explained in a announcement provided to the AP Students explained they have been able to sense the stress being felt by school administrators and professors We have administrators that are feeling pressure because we want to maintain our funding here It s been tense mentioned Ava Knox a rising junior who covers the university administration for the school newspaper Faculty she added want to be very careful about how they re conducting their research and about how they re addressing the pupil population They are also beholden to this new set of kind of ever-changing guidelines and stipulations by the federal establishment A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Misplaced optimism Shortly after Trump won a second term in November UCCS leaders were trying to gather information on the Republican s plans In December Sobanet met the newly elected Republican congressman who represented the school s district a conservative one that Trump won with of the vote In her meeting notes obtained by the AP the chancellor sketched out a scenario in which the college might avoid the drastic cuts and havoc under the incoming administration Research dollars - hard to pull back grant dollars but Trump tried to pull back particular last time The money goes through Congress Sobanet wrote in notes prepared for the meeting Grant money will likely stay but just change how they are worded and what it will fund Sobanet also observed that dismantling the federal Tuition Department would require congressional authorization That was unlikely she suggested given the U S Senate s composition Like various others she did not fully anticipate how aggressively Trump would seek to transform the federal administration Conservatives desire to revamp higher schooling began well before Trump took office They have long complained that universities have become bastions of liberal indoctrination and raucous protests In Republicans in Congress had a contentious hearing with several Ivy League university leaders Shortly after the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned During the presidential campaign last fall Trump criticized campus protests about Gaza as well as what he noted was a liberal bias in classrooms His new administration opened investigations into alleged antisemitism at several universities It froze more than million in research grants and contracts at Columbia along with more than billion at Harvard Columbia reached an agreement last month to pay million to resolve the examination When Harvard filed a lawsuit challenging Trump s actions his administration tried to block the school from enrolling international students The Trump administration has also threatened to revoke Harvard s tax-exempt status Northwestern University Penn Princeton and Cornell have seen big chunks of funding cut over how they dealt with protests about Israel s war in Gaza or over the schools backing for transgender athletes Trump s decision to target the wealthiest most of prestigious institutions provided specific comfort to administrators at the approximately other colleges and universities in the country The bulk higher development students in the United States are educated at regional masses universities or neighborhood colleges Such schools have not typically drawn attention from practices warriors Students and professors at UCCS hoped Trump s crackdown would avoid the school and others like it You ve got everyone liberals conservatives middle of the road commented Jeffrey Scholes a professor in the philosophy department You just don t see the kind of unrest and polarization that you see at other campuses The purse strings The federal administration has lots of leverage over higher teaching It provides about billion a year to universities for research In addition a majority of students in the U S need grants and loans from various federal programs to help pay tuition and living expenses This budget year UCCS got about million in research funding from a combination of federal state and private sources Though that is a relatively small portion of the school s overall million budget the college has made a push in latest years to bolster its campus research effort by taking advantage of grant money from cabinet agencies such as the U S Defense Department and National Institutes for Wellbeing The widespread federal grant cut could derail those efforts School officers were dismayed when the Trump administration terminated research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities the Defense Department and the National Science Foundation emails show The grants funded programs in civics cultural preservation and boosting women in apparatus fields School administrators scrambled to contact federal officers to learn if other grants were on the chopping block but they struggled to find answers the records show School administrators repeatedly sought out the assistance of federal officers only to learn those authorities were not sure what was happening as the Trump administration halted grant payments fired thousands of employees and shuttered agencies The sky is falling at NIH a university official communicated in notes on a call in which the school s lobbyists were providing reports of what was happening in Washington There are also concerns about other changes in Washington that will affect how students pay for college according to interviews with faculty and schooling guidelines experts While only Congress can fully abolish the U S Department of Schooling the Trump administration has tried to dramatically cut back its staff and parcel out multiple of its functions to other agencies The administration laid off nearly employees and problems have been broadcasted in the systems that handle attendee loans Management of scholar loans is expected to shift to another agency entirely In addition an early version of a major funding bill in Congress included major cuts to tuition grants Though that provision did not make it into the law Congress did cap loans for students seeking graduate degrees That plan could have ripple effects in the coming years on institutions such as UCCS that rely on tuition dollars for their operating expenses DEI and transgender issues hit campus To force change on campus the Trump administration has begun investigations targeting diversity programs and efforts to combat antisemitism The Schooling Department for example opened an scrutiny in March targeting a Ph D scholarship campaign that partnered with universities including UCCS to expand opportunities to women and nonwhites in graduate development The administration alleged the scheme was only open to certain nonwhite students and amounted to racial discrimination Sorry to be the bearer of bad news UCCS is included on the list of schools being investigated wrote Annie Larson assistant vice president of federal relations and outreach for the entire University of Colorado system Oh wow this is surprising wrote back Hillary Fouts dean of the graduate school at UCCS UCCS also struggled with how to handle executive orders particularly those on transgender issues In response to an order that aimed to revoke funds to schools that allowed transwomen to play women s sports UCCS began a review of its athletic programs It determined it had no transgender athletes the records show University functionaries were also relieved to discover that only one school in their athletic conference was affected by the order and UCCS rarely if ever had matches or games against that school We do not have any students impacted by this and don t compete against any teams that we are aware of that will be impacted by this wrote the vice chancellor for participant affairs to colleagues Avoiding the spotlight The attacks led UCCS to take preemptive actions and to self-censor in the hopes of saving programs and avoiding the Trump administration s spotlight Emails show that the school s legal counsel began looking at all the university s websites and evaluating whether any scholarships might need to be reworded The university changed the web address of its diversity initiatives from www diversity uccs edu to www belonging uccs edu Related Articles Victim s mother sues CU Colorado Springs says campus mishandled complaints about dorm-room killer CU Colorado Springs among universities under federal study as part of Trump s anti-DEI campaign CU Colorado Springs hires former U S attorneys to review shooting recommend any changes Judge orders competency evaluation for alleged CU Colorado Springs dorm shooter And the administrator responsible for the university s division of Inclusive Society Belonging got a new job title in January director of strategic initiatives University professors revealed the school debated whether to rename the Women s and Ethnic Studies department to avoid drawing attention from Trump but so far the department has not been renamed Along the same lines UCCS administrators have sought to avoid getting dragged into controversies a frequent occurrence in the first Trump administration UCCS agents attended a presentation from the training consulting firm EAB which encouraged schools not to react to every news cycle That could be a challenge because particular students and faculty are seeking vocal resistance on issues from conditions change to immigration Soon after Trump was sworn in for example a staff member in UCCS s sustainability scheme began pushing the entire University of Colorado system to condemn Trump s withdrawal from an international agreement to tackle state change It was the type of declaration universities had issued without thinking twice in past administrations In an email UCCS s top general relations executive warned his boss There is a growing sentiment among the thought leadership in higher ed that campus leaders not take a general stance on major issues unless they impact their campus society AP Teaching Writer Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this analysis Contact AP s global investigative group at Investigative ap org or ap org tips Get more Colorado news by signing up for The Denver Post s Mile High Roundup email newsletter