Op-Ed: NIC Win-Win

By Brent Regan • November 30, 2024

The following Op-Ed was submitted by Brent Regan. Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.

Now that the North Idaho College trustee election is over we can set aside the rhetoric and review the
facts.

At the heart of the NIC accreditation issue was DEI. DEI, alternately known as Social Justice or Woke, had
been creeping into the fabric of NIC for two decades. Starting slow but at an accelerating pace, the
adoption of DEI policies resulted in falling NIC attendance while administrative costs and bureaucratic
overhead soared.

Agenda driven indoctrination was displacing education and student’s freedom of expression was
restricted if they engaged in “wrongthink.” Valuable, practical classes and programs were being
curtailed in favor of more progressive studies. The changes were slow, so as not to raise alarm, but
incessant. Transmuting a community college from a resource where students can acquire marketable
skills to an institution of social transformation.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a racist, Marxist policy that invariably leads to destruction. Get
woke, go broke isn’t just a slogan, it’s a fact. Emphasizing equity, diversity and inclusion over
competency and merit is a sure path to failure. Examples abound. Military enlistment rates plummet
after DEI adoption. The Bud Light “trans” campaign debacle cost Anheuser-Bush a huge chunk of market
share. DEI resulted in Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign being the worst ever. Jaguar is learning the
painful lesson that their primary market, middle aged wealthy men are not self-obsessed social justice
warriors. These are typical examples of the ruin at the end of the DEI rainbow.

DEI did not arise spontaneously from the ether. It is an engineered movement cultivated by progressive
Marxist elements in institutions of higher education. Columbia, Berkley, Stanford and others are the
headwaters for the disciples who graduate and then go on to evangelizing the religion of woke while
being funded by foundations created by billionaire progressives like Soros and Gates.

The Woke Mind Virus infected many institutions, including those responsible for the accreditation of
colleges and universities. Accreditation was conceived as a way to ensure students were getting value
for their tuition dollars. “Accreditation” meant that an institution’s finances and academic standards
met minimum requirements. However, with time those accreditation standards would be morphed into
a tool for social revolution.

One mechanism for this transformation was money, specifically grants. The agency with a monopoly on
accreditation in Idaho is the Washington State based Northwest Commission on Colleges and
Universities. NWCCU has an annual budget of about $3.2 million. Over a third of that comes from grants
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The stated purpose of those grants is to promote DEI,
specifically “to build organizational capacity for intermediaries so that they can support multiple
colleges and universities to undergo institutional transformation” and “to develop communications
about organizations whose expertise and services can support colleges and universities in their efforts to
achieve equitable outcomes.”

On their website, NWCCU pledges its commitment to DEI “Promoting diversity, equity, inclusion,
belonging, and social justice within the organization and among member institutions.” “Member
institutions” obviously includes NIC.

During the run-up to the 2020 elections the progressives pledged that if the conservative candidates
Barnes and McKenzie were elected then accreditation would be put at risk. Accreditation had morphed
from a set of academic and financial standards into a weapon to be used to enforce progressive policies
and social change.

The accreditation complaint spells it out “if NIC is allowed to continue to defy and ignore the NWCCU
essential criteria (DEI) that welcomes, encourages, protects and promotes an inclusive academic
institution for the students, employees and the community, this will establish a dangerous precedent
and challenge to the NWCCU for its future work with institutions it oversees as to accreditation.” The
“future work” referenced is the “institutional transformation” paid for by the Gates Foundation.

The problem the progressives were having was that DEI is very unpopular so it had to be hidden as the
actual agenda. This is why the flurry of protests, lawsuits, disorderly board meetings, pulled fire alarm
and general propaganda campaign to gaslight “board governance” as the issue. In a move that would
make Saul Alinslky proud the Save-NIC gang generated chaos which they blamed on the board and then
demanded trustee resignations. Never once did they ask what they could do to help preserve
accreditation.

This past election the North Idaho “Republicans” (NIR)-Save NIC coalition was narrowly successful in
installing three freshman trustees. The win will likely be a Pyrrhic victory as the cost may not be worth
the rewards. Here is why.

North Idaho “Republicans” (NIR)-Save NIC now owns the accreditation problem. Their candidates were
promoted as “conservative Republicans” but they must now act as passive bystanders to the president’s
progressive agenda to satisfy the NWCCU. They will be a rubber stamp for the return of DEI policies and
they will have nobody to blame but themselves.

The NWCCU has been exposed. It is not an impartial referee for academia, but a political agent with a
progressive and unpopular agenda. The incoming Trump administration has already announced that
accreditation agency reform is a top priority. NWCCU may find its own accreditation at risk.

NIR is now guilty of all the sins they accused the Official Republican Party, the KCRCC, of committing. NIR
endorsed candidates without vetting, without interviews and without a vote of the membership and
with zero transparency. A small group of insiders made all the decisions while the membership went
along for the ride.

The accreditation issue is over, and so is the energy derived from that conflict.

All considered, this election was a win-win for citizens of Kootenai County and the KCRCC.

It’s just common sense.