NASHVILLE - State lawmakers today took final action on a bill defunding the University of Tennessee's Office for Diversity and Inclusion, adopting a scaled-down version that devotes one year's funding to minority engineering scholarships.
The House and Senate adopted a conference report that used a compromise developed by Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, sponsor of the Senate bill.
Some other Republican lawmakers want to strip funding permanently in light of the office's actions or suggestions or programs they found offensive such as suggested use of gender neural pronouns and to avoid letting holiday parties become a "Christmas Party" and the Knoxville campus' "Sex Week."
Instead, the office's $436,000 in funding goes for what may be as many as 100 scholarships for minority students.