Mizzou chancellor takes blame for cutting minority student groups’ funding
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- Mun choi said he made the decision to pull dedicated funding to five student groups.
- The five groups will be reclassified and become eligible for a maximum of $3,000 per year.
- Choi cited a July DOJ memo and external legal advice.
University of Missouri System President Mun Choi took responsibility for the university pulling dedicated funding for five identity-based student organizations.
In a staff meeting last week first reported by KOMU, Choi said he made the decision to prevent a potential investigation into the university. He pointed to Columbia University, which was targeted by the federal government last year, resulting in a $400 million funding freeze and hundreds of layoffs.
After receiving a Department of Justice memo in July on its interpretation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Choi said the university consulted with external legal advice on how to comply with the federal government.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that we were not in a defensible position, which could place us in jeopardy of losing all of the title four and the research grants. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I decided that I needed to protect the institution. So that’s a decision that I made,” Choi said.
Five student groups, the Legion of Black Collegians, Asian American Association, Association of Latin American Students, Queer Liberation Front and Front Four received about $140,000 in dedicated funding in the last fiscal year.
Now, those organizations will be recharacterized as recognized student organizations, which are eligible for a maximum of $3,000 per year in university support. There are over 650 recognized student organizations at Mizzou that are eligible to apply for a limited pool of funding.
Choi said there “may be opportunities to increase” the $3,000 cap for student organizations, and that student groups can fundraise externally.
“We have fundraising support for our student groups, event support. All those five organizations also have advisors, that will continue,” Choi said. “So we are going to seek ways that we can support these student groups in a way that are defensible if we are ever being investigated by the DOJ or Department of Education.”
The groups were informed that they would lose dedicated funding on April 3. On April 6, about 400 students packed into a room for a town hall for the defunded student groups.
There, the student organization’s leaders said they planned to assess alternative funding models, consult with legal counsel about the Department of Justice’s memo and conduct outreach campaigns about the impact the defunding had on their organizations.
The university has backtracked on DEI measures since 2015, when student protests about racism on campus led to the resignation of then-university system president Tin Wolfe and R. Bowen Loftin.
In March 2023, it scrapped diversity statements in its hiring practices after Missouri lawmakers proposed legislation that would ban it. In July 2024, it eliminated its Division of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in anticipation of legislation in other states targeting DEI.
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Mizzou chancellor takes blame for cutting minority student groups’ funding."
