A commuter college thought it could avoid Trump’s education crackdown. Here’s what happened

AP News ^ | Updated 9:41 AM CDT, August 23, 2025 | BYRON TAU

[E. Pluribus Unum]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Administrators at the state university’s campus in Colorado Springs thought they stood a solid chance of dodging the Trump administration’s offensive on higher education.

Located on a picturesque bluff with a stunning view of Pikes Peak, the school is far removed from the Ivy League colleges that have drawn President Donald Trump’s ire. Most of its students are commuters, getting degrees while holding down full-time jobs. Students and faculty alike describe the university, which is in a conservative part of a blue state, as politically subdued, if not apolitical.

That optimism was misplaced.

An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of emails from school officials, as well as interviews with students and professors, reveals that school leaders, teachers and students soon found themselves in the Republican administration’s crosshairs, forcing them to navigate what they described as an unprecedented and haphazard degree of change.

Whether Washington has downsized government departments, clawed back or launched investigations into diversity programs or campus antisemitism, the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs has confronted many of the same challenges as elite universities across the nation.

The school lost three major federal grants and found itself under investigation by the Trump’s Education Department. In the hopes of avoiding that scrutiny, the university renamed websites and job titles, all while dealing with pressure from students, faculty and staff who wanted the school to take a more combative stance.

“Uncertainty is compounding,” the school’s chancellor told faculty at a February meeting, according to minutes of the session. “And the speed of which orders are coming has been a bit of a shock.”

The college declined to make any administrators available to be interviewed. A spokesman asked the AP to make clear that any professors or students interviewed in this story were speaking for themselves...

[Colorado Doug]

I can say with certainty that this school is as woke as any Ivy League indoctrination center. I had the misfortune of attending a friends graduation there recently. It was all I could do to sit through the groveling occupied land acknowledgement followed by some heathen prayer by some Indian “Shaman” grifter. That school needs to lose all of it’s grants for that alone. The whole thing was pretty revolting. Lord knows what kind of worthless LGBGT%T$^6 degrees those people left with.