By Kara Grace Hess, Senior Associate Editor, and Selah Hurd, Staff Writer
As summer came to a close late July, David Cho remembers scrolling the news like any other day, until one headline made him stop and read more closely.
Cho read a memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) titled “Guidance For Recipients Of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination.” As director of Wheaton College’s Office of Multicultural Development (OMD), he needed to understand how the guidance from Attorney General Pam Bondi differed from the Department of Education (DOE)’s “Dear Colleague Letter” last issued February.
Cho found that the guidance affirmed the existing practices the college had already enacted in response to the Trump Administration’s executive order 14173 on Jan. 21 related to “antidiscrimination” and anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) practices.
In the letter, all higher education institutions receiving federal funding were given guidance to stop considering race within “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life,” within two weeks. Failure to comply would result in potential risking of federal funds.
Following this guidance, Wheaton College offices reviewed all websites and ensured that language about kingdom diversity was explicitly welcoming towards all students. The language changes clarified what was already happening in practice within the institution.
Vice President of Student Development, Paul Chelsen, said that the college updated language in a few places to clarify that all programs were open to all students after the aforementioned executive order addressing federal agencies about DEI initiatives was published because of the potential for implications for higher education.
“Even though that guidance was directed at federal agencies, we could kind of see the handwriting on the wall that eventually there was going to be something directed at colleges,” he said.
The commitments of Wheaton College to kingdom diversity, as voiced last spring by President Philip Ryken, have remained the same.
Summit Scholarship Changes
Since last spring, heritage-based scholarships for students previously under the “Summit Scholars” program have merged into one Summit Multicultural Leadership Scholarship (SMLS) for incoming freshmen that demonstrate a “commitment to kingdom diversity” and multicultural engagement. Plans to revamp the SMLS preceded the memos from the DOE and DOJ.
The cohort of students can also participate in 1-2-1 peer mentoring program, which is open to all freshmen, transfer and first year students who have an interest in involvement. Participants may request an assigned peer mentor that can serve them for as long as the student desires.
Senior mentor, Jordan Nuthalapaty expressed that mentors continue to serve as a resource for students in a variety of ways.
“The mentors are there to provide support for these students in any capacity they can, whether through prayer, friendship, or general support,” he said.
Changes and clarifications to the SMLS and 1-2-1 programs have been made with an understanding that, if Wheaton were to be denied federal funding, students relying on federal loans would be impacted. Volkman Associate Professor of Business and Law Steve Bretsen, emphasized that executive orders may only last as long as the president who issued them is in office.
“If you read Trump’s executive orders, one of the things he does is cancel all of President Biden’s executive orders that relate to racial discrimination and DEI,” he said. “Because again, they’re not acts of Congress, they’re acts of the president, they can be undone by the next president.”
The scholarships previously under the Summit Scholars program were broken into the Nieves Scholarship for Latino students, named after longtime sociology professor Alavaro Nieves, the Church Scholarship, named after Wheaton Track and Field coach Don Church, the BRIDGE Scholarship for students who participated in Wheaton’s BRIDGE program and the Jaffarian-Chavez room and board scholarship for Latino students, awarded about every four years.
The office has clarified through its website and communications that “kingdom diversity” means openness to students from all cultural backgrounds, Cho said. The vision behind these previous scholarships are also still consistent with the current vision of SMLS, but Cho anticipates some potential negative consequences as well.
“The specialness of certain scholarships would empower certain disenfranchised folks,” he said.
“You probably will lose a little bit of that then.”
The BRIDGE Program
The goal of BRIDGE is to demystify the college experience for students from any educational background. The program aims to foster a positive experience for high school students so that they feel equipped to navigate college well and thrive academically. Theon Hill, associate professor of communication and director of BRIDGE, described how consolidating the scholarship funds related to his work with high school students.
“Instead of that being tied, particularly to a student’s identity, it’s now tied to the student’s ability to demonstrate their support for their alignment with our Christ Center diversity statement,” he said.
Hill said that before the Dear Colleague letter and the recent Department of Justice memorandum, seven separate scholarships were awarded to students who participated in BRIDGE. However, after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June 2023, Wheaton discontinued this practice. Those scholarships were cut and the SMLS scholarship was created for all students, regardless of whether they participated in BRIDGE. Hill emphasized that this change was “not an effort to restrict the opportunities of others.”
“We want to expand educational opportunities to all,” he said. “I think it’s very important not to treat that as oppositional to anyone.”
College’s Historical Commitment to Kingdom Diversity
The guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice, published in July 2025, sought to ensure that recipients of federal funding do not engage in unlawful discrimination. Wheaton’s steadfast commitment to principles like kingdom diversity, according to Chelsen, is rooted in the college’s biblical convictions and grounded in Scripture.
Chelsen encouraged students to become familiar with the Christ-Centered Diversity Commitment as a way to understand the agreement they made to one another in the Community Covenant to embrace ethnic diversity as a part of God’s design for humanity.
“Ethnic diversity is a part of God’s design for humanity, we are created to bear his image. There’s not a monoculture in heaven, there’s different cultures, different tribes, different languages,” he said. “It’s never been a political agenda for us.”
Azana Mack, community diversity secretary for Student Government (SGA), said she has felt and observed a shift in conversation around diversity on campus since January. In her role, and with SGA as a whole, she hopes to consider all impacted, not just students of color.
“I’m really going to try to make sure that what we do as a school is benefiting students and not harming them more, because the world’s already gonna do that,” she said. SGA is committed to using “wisdom from people above us and wisdom from people around us, such as students, to guide our footsteps.”
While the memorandum released this summer seeks to eliminate DEI programs and policies, the college has consistently affirmed its commitment to the foundational principle of kingdom diversity – values protected by freedoms of speech and religious expression. In the past, Wheaton has been willing to defend its religious liberty in court.
Wheaton filed a lawsuit in 2012 protesting the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate, citing religious liberty concerns. That legal action went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2018 ruled in Wheaton’s favor, saying the school would not have to fill out a form that effectively transferred the cost of employee contraceptives to insurers.
Cho highlighted the tension he sees between complying with federal directives and remaining rooted in the college’s biblical convictions about kingdom diversity.
“All sorts of kings don’t align with greater kingdom principles,” he said. “How do you both give to Rome? Give to Caesar what Caesar’s, and yet remain to the kingdom principles.”
Editors Note: A former version of this article said that Don Church was a basketball coach. The Record regrets the mistake.
