Virginia Tech has reallocated $8.4 million in diversity, equity and inclusion expenditures, a committee reported this week during a meeting of the school’s board of visitors.
The university has been scrutinizing its programs since the spring to comply with the Trump administration’s efforts to scrub DEI from American colleges and universities.
Trump has argued that higher education DEI programs aimed at increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups have increased discrimination, particularly against white students.
Tech’s board of visitors voted in March to dissolve its Office of Inclusive Strategy and Excellence and review its policies and programs that could be deemed discriminatory, to avoid Trump’s threats to pull federal funding from noncomplying institutions.
That review, which includes scrutiny of scholarship programs, hiring and admissions practices, and campus cultural centers, has taken place as the Trump administration has targeted other public universities in the commonwealth for their policies, including the University of Virginia, George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Some students have continued to protest DEI cuts, urging Virginia Tech not to cater to Trump’s demands.
Though the board meeting took place at Tech’s Alexandria campus, about 50 students staged a march in Blacksburg on Monday. The march was organized by six student groups.
Lyonel “Zee” Myrthil, a senior studying entrepreneurship, innovation and technology, said the DEI cuts have been so broad “that anything related to culture, identity or community becomes a target.”
Myrthil, who criticized the university’s transparency during its DEI review in a phone interview Tuesday, said student organizers reviewed the board agenda and supplementary materials adding up to more than 1,000 pages over the weekend so they could share key points during the protest.
Myrthil is the co-founder of Black Mindedness and the Black Coalition, two newer student organizations aiming to foster community and empowerment among Black students.
The board of visitors compliance, audit and risk committee did not review the results of its ongoing DEI audit in detail at Tuesday’s meeting, which was interrupted by an informal visit from Tech’s new football coach, James Franklin. Franklin will be formally introduced to the Hokie community at a press conference Wednesday morning at Cassell Coliseum on the Blacksburg campus.
Along with the $8.4 million reallocated through the review, $4.6 million in related expenditures has been either “deemed allowable” or modified for compliance. More than $3.8 million of the reallocated funds came from the closure of the DEI office, while another $2.7 million came from programs that aimed to increase faculty diversity, in part by paying for a portion of the salary of some faculty members from underrepresented groups.
Some of the funds have been reallocated to student support, including $1.9 million toward scholarships. Funds will also cover some student fees and boost stipends for graduate students.
Five campus cultural centers — serving Black, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities, along with one for the LGBTQ+ community — remain open this year, though Myrthil said events planned by those centers have been heavily scrutinized by the university. Tech employs 59 people across those five cultural centers.
“Some people feel empowered and motivated and ambitious,” Myrthil said when asked about the mood on campus this fall. “But some of that ambition is fleeting. Some students feel powerless, not sure what to do or where to start.”
He said student efforts are underway to explore the creation of a Black student center off campus that could operate without the funding or approval of the university.
Among the various DEI cuts across the university, student groups have recently been concerned about the sunset of some Living Learning Communities, residential units that allow students to be housed together to focus on a common theme. Those themes range from academic subjects and cultural interests to LLCs for first-generation and transfer students.
Tech announced the 2026 closures of Lavender House, focusing on LGBTQ+ studies, and Ujima, which has an Africana studies focus, to students in those LLCs in September.
In a statement on Sept. 18, university spokesperson Mark Owczarski said that “it is not uncommon for residence life to change living learning community options from year to year.”
Lavender House, which has about 35 participants, was established in 2022. Ujima launched in 2018 and has around 182 students.
Two other LLCs will also shut down at the end of this school year, according to university documents: Orion, a sciences program, and Rhizome, which focuses on local approaches to global challenges.
About 500 students currently participate in those four programs.
More than 4,000 students participate in Tech’s 24 LLCs and residential colleges, which cost the university around $1.6 million annually to operate, according to documents included in the board of visitors’ packet for Tuesday’s meeting.
Myrthil participated in Ujima during his freshman year at Tech. He said it provided a sense of belonging and made it easier to integrate into the larger university community, which is about 57% white. “For underrepresented communities, [LLCs] bridge the gap between surviving this university and thriving,” Myrthil said.
Merritt Brewer, a sophomore architecture student from Greensboro, North Carolina, also walked in Monday’s march.
Brewer said she didn’t attend a large student protest back in March due to her class schedule, “So I felt more of a moral obligation to go to this one, especially since there’s been an actual number put to this DEI cut we’ve been fearing for months,” she said in a message on Instagram on Monday night.
Brewer lives in the Spanish house within Mozaiko, an LLC focused on intercultural living.
She said the draw of living in an LLC is “the sense of community and the relationships that come with it.” Participants can “come home to” people who have a shared identity at the end of the day, she said.
Brewer said she was surprised that Mozaiko was not on the university’s “cut list.”
“Mozaiko in particular is a hotspot for international students who are definitely being targeted by the Presidential administration right now,” she wrote.
Mozaiko was one of several LLCs university President Tim Sands mentioned during his remarks at the board of visitors meeting Tuesday as he noted Tech’s inclusion in the top 25 schools on U.S. News and World Report’s list of schools with learning communities.