Student loan forgiveness will fatten DEI bank accounts

“Hey Glenn, follow Ron’s lead.”

Vote-buying schemes have defined the Democrat party ever since FDR’s “chicken in every pot,” costing the Treasury over the ensuing decades not chicken feed but untold trillions. The list is long and appalling, Biden’s so-called “student loan forgiveness” program being the latest iteration.

So, who else besides students will benefit from Democrat largesse, as a sort of “trickle down” consequence, foreseen and certainly intended?

The answer becomes apparent when we take a look at one particular category, DEI staffers, highlighted in this recent report out of Virginia.

The University of Virginia spends $20 million a year on its 235 DEI staffers, including a woman who says the spike in premature deaths in Appalachia is due to the ‘toxicity of whiteness,’ a damning report says.

Open the Books, a spending watchdog, says the flagship public college in Charlottesville drops $15 million on salaries and $5 million more in benefits to its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team.

They include Rachel Spraker, an ‘equity and inclusive’ officer, who calls Appalachia’s wave of premature deaths a sign of ‘white toxicity,’ and the school’s diversity chief Martin Davidson.

Adam Andrzejewski, author of the damning study, said UVA has ’embraced the divisive quotas of the neo-Marxist DEI crowd.’

‘Tens of millions of dollars in student tuition and taxpayer monies are flowing into promoting anti-American notions and radical philosophies that judge the color of one’s skin instead of the content — and competence — of their character.’

Andrzejewski’s report aims at a bloated DEI infrastructure — about four times the cost of Florida’s shuttered programs, he says.

He highlights Davidson, senior associate dean of the Darden School of Business and global chief diversity officer, UVA’s top DEI earner with an annual salary-and-benefits package of $587,340.

That’s more than three times the salary of Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.

In case you’re wondering, as I am, what Gov. Youngkin is doing about this, the answer is not much, so far at least.

In all fairness, unlike Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, Youngkin does not have a friendly legislative branch who will do what Florida did.  Also, governance of Virginia’s state universities is very autonomous. Previous Democrat governors have packed UVA boards of governors with political hacks, um, campaign donors. 

Youngkin’s only real recourse is to publicly criticize and shame UVA for paying buffoon administrators at state schools — not just the DEI types, but all of them — more than almost anyone in America makes. This would be a good way for Youngkin to signal interest in serving in a Trump administration after his term expires in 2026 and perhaps run for president in 2028 if Trump doesn’t seek re-election.

Arnold Cusmariu is the author of Logic for Kids.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License