Between each of her classes at Utah Valley University — no matter how far away they were — Simone Goodheart seemed to always find herself walking back to her favorite spot on campus: the little lounge for LGBTQ students tucked inside the education building, Room 112.
Her feet carried her there sometimes without a thought, she joked. She remembers going there, too, back when it was “practically in a closet” in another building, with a couch that somehow managed to fit seven students at once, before the lounge was moved to the new spot in 2022.
Goodheart doesn’t know where she’ll go to find the same love, community and acceptance now that it is set to close at the end of the month — and all of the services that went along with it, under the umbrella of the Center For Intercultural Engagement.
“Without this space, for myself personally, I don’t know if I would be here,” said Goodheart, a trans woman, during a “solidarity gathering” of students Thursday.
UVU announced in an April 11 email to students that it was permanently closing the center and its affiliated programs for LGBTQ students, multicultural students and women.
The message was brief, saying because of “legislative action” the center would be shuttered “effective today.” Student spaces, including the lounge, would remain open only through the end of the semester.
The staff at the center, which seems to be five people based on an archived version of the school’s website and conversations with students, were all laid off. The webpage for the center has since been taken down and instead displays a “404: Page not found” message.
The school confirmed the layoffs, as well as a handful of layoffs in other departments, during a town hall meeting with faculty. The center closure and staff reductions come after a combination of bills that have targeted higher education in the past two years, said Jim Mortensen, the school’s acting president; school leader Astrid Tuminez remains on leave after the death of her husband.
The latest measure, HB265 mandated multimillion dollar budget cuts this year across public higher education in the state; the other, HB261, prohibited last year all diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, efforts for Utah colleges and universities.
Some students are frustrated that the closures and layoffs have come in Tuminez’s absence; her leave was supposed to end April 1 but was extended another month.
Tuminez has long been a champion of diversity and inclusion programs and fought for the school’s LGBTQ, multicultural and women’s programs to remain, despite UVU being the first to change the overarching name of its programs under the anti-DEI law, removing the now-banned words “inclusion” and “diversity.”
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UVU had been the only school to hold out overall. After other universities in the state quickly closed all cultural centers last summer, the Orem school received formal approval in November from the Utah Board of Higher Education to operate its Center for Intercultural Engagement, as long as services were offered to all and not limited based on identity characteristics, such as gender or race.
That had always been the case, students said, with the spaces open to all.
But school spokesperson Scott Trotter told The Salt Lake Tribune in a statement that “the strict enforcement of state law and intense legislative oversight” had made continuing with that impossible. Now, a year later, UVU has followed suit.
Students met on Thursday to mourn the closures in what they called a “solidarity gathering.” Most said they were not upset with UVU — understanding the school was limited in what it could do — but they expressed sadness, fear, frustration and anger with state lawmakers.
“Why take it away?” said Etoni-Ma’asi Crowfoot Wolfgramm, a student graduating this semester who is a member of the Blackfoot tribe and Siksika nation. “It brought a lot of communities together, particularly native students off the reservation.”
He said the announcement was sudden. On the night of April 10, he and other students in UVU’s Cultural Envoy dance group performed their showcase. The next morning, the staff who had helped them were all fired and the center shut down.
What the center meant to students
The gathering Thursday was like a funeral, with students standing at a microphone, offering eulogies for the center and services that they depended on.
“Just because this program has been lost does not mean we have lost everything and we have lost forever,” said Braden Multon, a senior at UVU and member of the Spectrum Queer Student Alliance.
The alliance organized the event, and members of the LGBTQ community made up most of the attendees.
“Queer students in Utah Valley face challenges that I don’t think a lot of people are aware of,” Goodheart added.
Culturally, the Utah County area is predominantly conservative, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a large presence. It can be hard, she said, to find spaces where you feel like you belong.
The nearly 200 students in the crowd held onto little rainbow flags and held tighter to each other. Some cried. A few made friendship bracelets. One handed out flyers with the numbers of legislators to call.
Most waved signs that read, “Defunding diversity is violence,” and, “Compliance shouldn’t cost community.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Valley University students speak out about the closing of their multicultural center on campus, including a space for LGBTQ community members, in Orem on Thursday, April 17, 2025.
They sat in the ballroom where UVU holds its biggest events, with the school’s name in all caps in silver lettering above their heads.
From a podium covered with a pride flag, speaker after speaker described how the closure felt both surprising, because of how fast it happened, yet anticipated, because of the law.
Multon recalled how he and others fought to get the new space for the LGBTQ lounge — and how 100 students crammed into it on the day the closure was announced in protest.
“The Spectrum Queer Alliance is still here and is not going anywhere,” he said, adding that the club will continue to fight and maintain its presence on campus.
Asia Bushman, a student on and off at UVU since 2017, has been collecting stories of students who used the queer lounge. And reading them, she said, has shown her how important it was.
“The power of your voices is astonishing,” she said.
In one message, a student said it was the only place they felt safe. Another said they could turn there when they didn’t feel accepted at home.
Bushman said she started to figure out who she was there, too, and later felt comfortable identifying as lesbian. The students filling the ballroom cheered and clapped.
“I instantly felt loved, accepted,” she said. “I am finally living open, fully myself, to the world.”
The students are fighting “for some semblance” of a space to be left open for them to meet and spend time with others. They have launched a petition that has more than 1,800 signatures.
Trotter, the school spokesperson, said UVU is moving forward with focusing on its new student success center, which is designated under HB261 to help all students without recognizing different backgrounds.
Goodheart said that’s not the same. She worked for a time in UVU’s LGBTQ program under a work-study opportunity and joked, “I got paid to be gay.” The students in the room laughed.
“But really, I got paid to help people and make a difference in my community,” she said. “I needed community. We all need community.”
Budget cuts and staff layoffs
Acting President Mortensen didn’t speak much on the intercultural service cuts during his address to faculty last week. But he did focus on the impact, overall, of the budget cuts and resulting staff reductions at the school.
Under HB265, UVU must reduce its budget by $8.9 million. It can earn that share of its money back, according to the law, as long it shows it will be reallocated for high-wage, high-demand programs. “And we want our money back,” Mortensen said.
The funding, if reallocated, will be spent to expand the school’s engineering, health care and artificial intelligence programs, as well as increasing some of the schools certificate programs, he added.
The bill is part of a larger effort by the Legislature in recent years to cull what Utah leaders see as “administrative bloat” in higher education and refocus on getting students in the doors, graduated quickly and back out into a career.
Mortensen said UVU was originally bracing for a cut as high as $35 million, but that amount was talked down in negotiations; however, he said, the school had known a reduction was coming and planned ahead for it.
“Pruning is a painful process,” he added, noting that he grew up spending his Saturdays with his dad working in the family’s orchard. “But it strengthens the tree to grow fruit in the future.”
The school has merged programs in the past, Mortensen said, as it’s already tried to be financially mindful. It set aside $2.7 million appropriated from the state last year as a rainy day fund for cuts.
Mortensen called that a “good percentage” of the total UVU needed. “It helped us soften the blow,” he said.
But it didn’t cover everything. The school also cut back on some travel and software licenses. To come up with the rest, the university looked at staffing — which is its highest cost, accounting for about 85% of the UVU’s annual budget.
Mortensen said the school has moved to eliminate 47 positions. Many were already vacant, after UVU instituted a hiring freeze last fall.
Trotter declined to provide exact numbers, adding only that about one-third were vacant or addressed through early retirements and contract expirations. That would mean somewhere around 30 people were likely laid off. Impacted individuals have all been notified, Mortensen said.
“These were not cold, spreadsheet-driven conversations,” he said. “These are real people.”
‘At UVU, there is a place for you’
The students impacted by the intercultural center closure said they will miss the staff members who were their advocates and mentors.
“They have singlehandedly changed so many lives,” Bushman said.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Valley University students speak out about the closing of their multicultural center on campus, including a space for LGBTQ community members, in Orem on Thursday, April 17, 2025.
Brenna Bahe, an aviation science student and a member of the Navajo Nation, said one of the staff members helped bring Indigenous dancing back into her life. Bahe is a third-generation hoop dancer.
“I often felt like I had to separate my culture from my school life,” she said.
She came to the gathering after a practice, dressed in her regalia. She worries what will happen now to the Cultural Envoy dance club without the staff.
Milena Acosta, who has done folklore Latin dancing since she was a child and was also part of UVU’s troupe, said, “We’re definitely grieving.”
“It was so special to find a community here on campus where I got to express my culture and ethnicity and do it proudly,” she said. “We just wanted to share that.”
Many who gathered Thursday said they had found family in the intercultural spaces. They shared joys with the friends they met, talking about getting through hard classes and graduating and falling in love. They joked about how student Orpheus Isom would write a new philosophy question on the whiteboard in the LGBTQ lounge each week, and they would all puzzle over it.
They comforted each other in sorrow, too, said Chase Schetselaar, an alumnus who graduated in 2023, when a friend was fighting a mental health battle and, sometimes, when they lost that. But they had each other.
“The Legislature cannot take that away,” he said. “No matter how hard you try, you cannot write us out of the picture.”
Schetselaar quoted the school’s motto, “At UVU, there is a place for you.” He feels that will remain, even without the special spaces.
Goodheart believes that, too, but she is hurt by what she sees as a bill “written by people who don’t know the importance of these services.”
Right now, she is mad that when her feet carry her to the lounge, she will find it empty.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Orpheus Isom speaks at Utah Valley University as students were gathering after the closing of their multicultural center on campus, including a space for LGBTQ community members, in Orem on Thursday, April 17, 2025.
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