Marc Goulding’s office, tucked away in a quiet corner of the Liberal Arts North building, is dimly lit, with a few records propped near a small record player in the corner. Every shelf in the office is lined with books. As soon as we sit down, the conversation shifts to the law that has reshaped the campus mood this year: Senate Bill 796.
Goulding, professor and chair of the history and geography department, keeps a copy of the bill close by. He runs his finger under the line barring public universities from using state resources to “support or require” DEI activities. He mentioned a question that had been nagging him since the bill came into effect in July: If a state-paid professor publicly supports an LGBTQ organization, does that count as “support”?
“Their wording on that is extremely vague,” Goulding said. He sees SB 796, combined with the recent orders and federal warnings, as creating a kind of pressure that is hard to ignore on campus.
UCO made changes in this direction last year after Gov. Kevin Stitt’s executive order narrowed what counted as DEI work. The university closed its Office of Inclusive Community and dissolved its Committee on Diversity. Two positions were eliminated, and the remaining responsibilities were moved under general student success programming. In 2026, universities will have to submit annual compliance reports explaining how their campus handles anything tied to race, gender or identity.
Earlier this fall at UCO, two students preparing “Boy My Greatness,” a play that centered on the boys who performed female roles in Shakespeare’s era, ran into that oversight firsthand. The show lost its university funding hours before its first rehearsal, with administrators citing SB 796 in a contract review. UCO determined the play’s material was out of compliance with the new restrictions. The students were told they could switch productions under legal supervision or continue without university support. They chose the latter, then launched a GoFundMe that raised nearly $10,000 and staged the show off campus.
Goulding said faculty have already started asking hypothetical questions that felt unthinkable a few years ago. Things like whether a course title could ever be considered a problem or whether a topic could attract the wrong kind of attention.
“The very fact that those conversations are happening means people are worried,” he said.
“I think that it’s hard right now to see what’s coming from our administration and what’s coming from the state and the national administrations,” Goulding said. “It gives a lot of cover for somebody. If somebody wanted to hit, they could say, ‘Oh, it’s not me doing it, it’s Stitt,’ or, ‘It’s Trump.’”
He recalled a moment years ago when university legal counsel asked faculty to clear certain events ahead of time. “If you’re going to put on any kind of programming that’s controversial, like around Palestine, can you check with the counsel’s office first?” he said. “And I know that outraged a number of people, myself included.”
SB 796 can read like a procedural change, but Goulding’s bigger concern is how easily the language could be stretched.
He picked up the bill again and read from the top: “An act relating to higher education, prohibiting certain institutions of higher education from using state funds, property or assets to facilitate or require certain activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion.”
“I teach Black history and I talk a lot about race… how can I not?” he said. “There’s this general feeling that intolerance is just around the corner, hiding under the bed or whatever.”
He pointed to recent events at Columbia University. “The idea that this venerable old institution would be bullied into turning around and saying, ‘OK, we will police our students in this way, we will do this, that and the other thing’… that sends shock waves.” He added, “The idea that the government in Washington could sit down and say, we do not like what you are doing, so we are going to take your federal funding away. That is censorship. I do not see how else you can describe it.”
“We are in uncharted territory,” he said. “And I sincerely don’t have the answer to it.”
What he does know is that he hasn’t changed his own classroom.
“I haven’t censored myself,” he said. “All of my colleagues in this department, whether they’re senior faculty or junior … have not and will not self-censor. Most of us in this department touch upon some of those sorts of things. You can’t teach history without it.”
He said the pressure affects more than just faculty. “This is going to sound really corny, but we are all in this sort of situation together,” he said. “Faculty, staff and students. If one of us is feeling pressure — whether from inside the institution or from the state or wherever — then we’re all feeling the pressure.”
That is why he said he wants a clear message from the top.
“I would love to hear what Todd Lamb has to say,” he said. “Like, where does he stand on these things?” He said he wants a statement laying out where the university stands on issues happening nationally, especially around speech.
“If a student criticizes the State of Israel, is that going to be considered antisemitism?” he asked. “All these questions.”
He paused for a moment, then added, “I will continue to do what’s right. I don’t want to get fired — I’m 57 years old, man — but I’m not going to bullshit somebody and say, ‘Oh, I love this policy.’”
And if anyone tried to stop him from teaching the parts of history that make the United States look bad?
“Then I’d resign,” he said. “I don’t know what else to say about that.”
