Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration comes largely from his family, which has been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician.
Cade, a student at The Ohio State University (OSU) who is double majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory, wants to follow in the footsteps of his family members. His maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who played a big role in raising him — worked at the Columbus, Ohio-based affordable housing-development nonprofit Homeport, has gone to Capitol Hill to speak with the state delegation multiple times, and was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, according to Cade. His father is the senior vice president of the housing choice voucher program at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and his older brother has a degree in political science and is interested in social justice advocacy work, Cade says.
Last fall, Cade's first on campus, he hit the ground running, applying to opportunities that would bolster his resume for a future career in politics. The now 19-year-old secured an internship with the United States Department of Transportation, and a work-study job on campus in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. But this federal opportunity was scrapped when the Trump admin imposed a hiring freeze and budget cuts. According to Cade, his campus job ended when the university announced it would “sunset” the diversity office in response to federal and state anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion orders and actions.
“Over the summer leading into my freshman year, I joined an [OSU] early-arrival program hosted by the Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male,” Cade tells Teen Vogue. “They were founded to try and help support Black men stay[ing] in college.” When a program coordinator approached him about a work-study position, Cade said he was eager to contribute to their cause.
“I jumped on the opportunity because I had to pay for college…. I supported programming [they had already planned] for the year, so I would help order food or speak with students or do interviews,” he explains. “But on the other side… I developed a good 20 different programs for the next year… In February, when they announced the closing, I was like, ‘So, six months of work just for no reason.’”
Ted Carter, OSU's president, released a statement on February 27 that said the closure of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion was a response to both state and federal actions regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion in public education. The move eliminated 17 staff positions, not including student roles, the university said. Programming and services provided by the Office of Student Life’s Center for Belonging and Social Change were also scrapped.
The changes came before the Trump admin’s initial deadline for complying with a memo that threatened to cut funding for public colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, that offer DEI programs and initiatives. In March, the administration announced that OSU was one of roughly 50 universities under federal investigation for allegedly discriminating against white and Asian students in graduate admissions. Additionally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation in March banning DEI programs in the state’s public colleges and universities. The legislation went into effect in June.
Cade describes himself as bubbly, someone with a resilient attitude. He says he was unanimously elected by other student senators to represent the College of Arts and Sciences’ Social and Behavioral Sciences program in the University Senate following a vacancy. He says his peers looked to him as a student leader. But he was also feeling the disappointment of the new policies making it challenging to have a “normal” college experience.
As a student leader, Cade says, he tried to absorb the weariness students were feeling. But, as policies continuously interrupted his college experience, he could withstand only so much disappointment.
Before the DEI office closed, he recalls, “I felt so heard and seen. I was with so many different Black people who had similar life experiences to me growing up, and I went to a private, predominantly white, Catholic high school.… It was not a place that supported me culturally and helped me understand more about who I am and my Blackness.”
But at the university, Cade continues, “the programming we had throughout the year [was] about how to change the narrative on who a Black man is and what it means when you go out here and interact with people. And then, for them to close down all these programs, that essentially told me that I wasn't cared about.”
Cade says he hit his lowest point in February, shutting himself in his room, skipping classes. But by the end of the month, morale was high among students to fight back as they organized protests and a sit-in at the student union. Still, Cade recalls, after about a week, the momentum “died down.” Students felt like there was a “cloud of darkness” hanging over their heads, according to Cade.
He also thought of his Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) coworkers, some of whom had spent decades working there, helping students. In particular, he thought of his former colleague, Chila Thomas, EdD, who celebrated her fifth anniversary last year as the executive director of the Young Scholars Program. That program, which helps low-income, aspiring first-generation college students get to and through college, is one of several ODI office programs that will continue. He saw her and others in ODI put on a brave face the day after President Carter’s announcement, still helping students and giving them space to talk through their feelings, despite the uncertainties surrounding their own employment. Cade says their persistence in embracing all students was a testament to the office’s inclusivity and not exclusivity, as politicians try to make DEI programs out to be.
But the DEI crackdown wasn’t bad news for all students. For some, Cade says, these anti-DEI changes have emboldened their ideologies. “One day I was walking and… this white person came up to me and was like, ‘I'm so glad they're getting rid of DEI,’ spit on my shoe and called me a n—er," he recalls. "I don't know how that could ever be acceptable to anyone, but that was [when] a [switch flipped] in my head... I couldn't sit down and be sad and silent. I had to stand up and make change.”
In March, Cade traveled with other students to Washington, DC, as part of the undergraduate student government’s Governmental Relations Committee. They met with Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson and an aide, along with staffers from the offices of fellow Ohio lawmakers Sen. Bernie Moreno and Rep. Joyce Beatty to discuss college affordability, DEI policies, and the federal hiring freeze, with Cade explaining how he had been impacted by the US Department of Transportation cancelling his internship.
In Carter’s announcement, he stated that all student employees would be “offered alternative jobs at the university”; but, Cade said, during a meeting with Office of Diversity and Inclusion student employees, an OSU dean clarified that they would have to apply for new opportunities. The policy changes meant there were fewer work-study roles and more students in need of jobs, and Cade saw the market as increasingly competitive and began to job-hunt elsewhere.
He’s still looking for a work-study job, but he secured summer work with the Ohio Department of Transportation as a communications and policy intern. (Reached for comment via email, Ohio State Director of Media and PR Chris Brooker told Teen Vogue that the school could not comment on the experiences of individual students. Brooker said “all student employees and graduate associates impacted by these program changes were offered the opportunity to pursue transitioning into alternative positions at the university, as well as support in navigating that change.”)
Although Cade was drawn to OSU for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs’ masters program, he says, he might have reconsidered schools had he known the university would bend to lawmakers’ anti-DEI efforts. Cade entered his sophomore year determined but cautious about how education-related legislation and policies may continue to impact his college experience.
Though he has been able to overcome significant challenges so far, he worries about his peers: “What really concerns me is people who aren't as self-motivated or as resilient as me who, when they see this wall of stuff blocking them, don't figure out a way to go around it or go through it," Cade says. "They are just stuck there. And there are many, many people like that who have so many other challenges, and some students who maybe don't even want to pursue college. This is just another thing that says, ‘Oh yeah, this isn't for me.’”
