Commentary

The University of Missouri’s Med School Diversity Bender

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • November 19, 2022
  • University of Missouri School of Medicine

The University of Missouri School of Medicine has a strange strategy for ensuring “diversity.” Like virtually all medical schools, it’s fully committed to a divisive woke agenda. But it also recently spent nearly $40,000 on parties and swag under the guise of recruiting minority students. Who knew that woke medical education was so much fun on the taxpayer dime?

We discovered this bizarre situation after the University responded to our recent freedom of information request. We requested all invoices paid for or by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the School of Medicine, from January 2021 to the present, among other things. We didn’t expect what the University sent us.

When we say swag, we aren’t joking. The medical school literally used that word to categorize an $8,550 payment to the Student National Medical Association, where it set up a recruiting booth. It spent another $2,096 on “swag” for “D&I,” a reference to diversity and inclusion at a similar recruitment event.

Another payment to the Student National Medical Association was for the “spring mix,” as in a party. That one cost $2,142.13. And the medical school spent $1,337 on a diversity-focused tailgate – their word, not ours.

The list goes on, with recruitment receptions and celebrations. Not all the charges are apparently party-related, like the $3,050 registration for the “National Conference for Community and Justice of Metropolitan St. Louis,” which is fully bought into the idea that physicians are biased based on skin color. Separately, we’ve found that Missouri’s School of Medicine has multiple racially discriminatory scholarships. We’ve filed federal civil rights complaints to root out this discrimination.

Taxpayers fund a significant part of the Mizzou School of Medicine. They – and the state’s lawmakers – should be asking why they’re forking over so much money to an institution that parties hard in the name of “diversity.”

Is your medical school using wokeness as a cover for slush funds and shenanigans? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.