University of Maryland removes list of 25 issues found by Black students in 2020 

The University of Maryland’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion website no longer displays twenty-five critical issues determined by Black student leaders in 2020. 

According to a March 8 archive of the dashboard, four issues still remain in progress.

The issues came to fruition with the national push for racial justice and social reform in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Created in collaboration with 34 Black student organizations, the demands addressed racial bias, police reform and enrollment diversity among other concerns.

In the five years since the issues were created, four were marked in progress, 16 were marked as a sustained commitment and five were marked as complete. The site archive indicates that the dashboard had last been updated in January of this year.

Currently, the site displays two paragraphs: one detailing the history of the issues’ development and another listing the actions completed by the university. The original set of demands, specific actions taken and tasks that are still in-progress are nowhere to be found on the office’s site.

Left, the March 8, 2025 archive of the 25 issues dashboard. Right, the site as of April 16, 2025. (University of Maryland)

Devonte Boswell, a junior kinesiology major and co-president of the university’s NAACP chapter, finds the site’s change unsettling.

“I feel like they’re trying to save themselves,” he said. “What are y’all trying to hide or why are y’all trying to hide our concerns from the public?”

The ninth issue called for the administration to be “accountable and [ensure] transparency in following through on these demands.” 

In a statement to The Black Explosion, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion said it is in “the process of reviewing and updating the content originally presented on the dashboard.”

Saba Tshibaka, co-founder of Black Terps Matter–an anti-racist coalition started in 2020–and alumna of the university, was disappointed by the change. 

“This was the only thing we had to hold them accountable. We would reference back to it a lot,” she said. “It’s about to be the five year anniversary of our first protest and the whole thing we worked hard for is going to be–they’re trying to have vanished.”

The Black Student Union, the university’s chapter of the NAACP, Black Terps Matter and over 30 other student organizations that were invited by the university to come up with the issues.

BSU speaker of the house, Julion Harris, wrote in a statement to The Black Explosion that the organization was disheartened by the news, yet optimistic about the resilience of the campus community.

“To no longer have them up in a public place for others to become aware of these issues definitely is a step back,” he wrote. “But no, it won’t stop the plight to bring awareness to the issues that critically affect the Black community here at UMD.”