Imagine logging into Garnet Gate this fall, only to find your favorite student organization gone. It doesn't show up in search, you're no longer a part of it and the leaders of the organization can't access any university resources. As of November, only 3% of groups are fully compliant with the new standards; at this pace, most organizations could face those consequences next spring unless completion improves.
As of fall 2025, USC ties student-organization recognition to new mandatory trainings. Every organization must attend three workshops during the academic year and send at least one representative to an annual conference. Groups that want to reserve campus space or request funding from Student Government or the Student Organization Funding Assistance Board must complete those specialized trainings as well.
The question is: what kind of training this really is? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are meant to foster belonging and representation across campuses. At USC, DEI has shaped student engagement for many years, from launching commissions to review racist building names to creating Inclusive Excellence programs. The department now enforcing these workshops also runs Social Justice, Diversity and Inclusion workshops and trainings.
These changes arrive just as state and national leaders are working to dismantle DEI infrastructure altogether. I support DEI and believe it strengthens campus life, but this rollout feels poorly timed and unnecessarily punitive. If the goal is to build leadership, the consequence for non-compliance shouldn’t be losing your organization.
The broader political climate makes that risk impossible to ignore. Texas’ SB 17, in effect since Jan. 1, 2024, eliminates DEI offices at public universities; Florida’s SB 266 bars public institutions from spending on DEI; South Carolina legislators have filed bills to rein in or ban DEI across state institutions; and in Washington, the “Dismantle DEI Act” was introduced to shutter federal DEI offices and restrict related funding.
If this policy is meant to endure, it needs to function as a content-neutral student service, not a values test. In a climate this hostile, linking student-group recognition to specific workshops almost guarantees the change will be read as ideological. If DEI is to last on this campus, it should be built into voluntary student leadership and supported openly — not rolled out when every requirement looks like a litmus test.
The policy change
Under the new USC policy, student groups must complete required leadership training and send a representative to the Gamecocks LEAD Conference in spring, with attendance recorded in Garnet Gate.
Miss the trainings, and your group could lose recognition. Under Policy STAF 3.10, student organizations that don’t meet new requirements risk losing access to campus spaces, funding and official platforms.
“I don’t think it’s too far-fetched that they would use this to filter out some (organizations),” said Jacob Whisenant, vice president of USC's Turning Point USA chapter.
Whisenant is also a first-year Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Machine Learning. He worries the new student-organization requirements could be applied to remove disfavored groups from campus.
USC spokesperson Collyn Taylor said the LSC will work with organizations that can’t make one of the available workshops. Taylor added that the university believes groups are excited about the mandatory trainings and wants all students to have a chance to attend and learn.
Not everyone is convinced. Some argue the “leadership” mandate overlaps with DEI-style programming because the LSC also runs Social Justice, Diversity and Inclusion series, making the requirement feel ideological rather than purely skills-based.
Chandler Mabe, a second-year theology and political science student and chairman of the Upstate College Republicans, argued that the policy pressures student leaders to conform to a top-down set of values.
“Who’s going to be targeted? ... If you’re going to enforce this, at least make it universal, but we would oppose its enforcement entirely,” Mabe said. “If this was organic, then make it voluntary.”
Clemson v. USC
For many organizations, adding optional trainings for funding eligibility and room reservations to the three core workshops means roughly seven separate sessions across the academic year.
By contrast, student leaders at Clemson describe a lighter touch; only minimal training requirements and staff who focus on helping groups host events rather than enforcing workshops.
In a statement, Taylor said students at USC expressed an eagerness to participate in additional and continuing leadership trainings and that the new requirements offer multiple options to build leadership and community-engagement skills useful beyond college.
“I disagree with the premise of student organizations having to go to three arbitrary workshops to be told how to act,” Whisenant said. “Not how to be better leaders and how to run the student orgs, but what political lines they need to follow.”
At Clemson, there is no comparable leadership-workshop quota tied to recognition; training is largely optional and event-support focused, with staff emphasizing logistics help rather than forcing workshops.
Jack Lyle, a third-year political science student and chairman of the Clemson College Republicans said that training requirements are minimal.
“A lot of the time, university staff is more than willing to work with us. They really enjoy the publicity that the university gets and the hosting of these high-profile individuals. They benefit from it. We benefit from it. The relationship’s pretty liquid, pretty smooth,” he said.
He described the process as straightforward, saying it mostly comes down to confirming a group’s registration and coordinating logistics with staff rather than completing mandatory workshops.
“As long as you’re registered ... and you get approved by administration, then you’re good to go,” Lyle said.
The political atmosphere
Mabe sees the mandate as an attempt to shape belief, arguing that required summits and workshops risk pressuring students toward preferred viewpoints.
“It seems like you’re trying to conform the way I think,” Mabe said.
Eight student leaders declined to speak on record and said they fear retaliation from administrators that could jeopardize their recognition, funding or access to campus space.
“(Student organizations) have got a lot to lose, nothing really to gain,” said Jackson Heaberlin, a first-year political science student and social chair of the Clemson College Republicans.
Taylor said in a statement that the response to the requirements has been overwhelmingly positive and urged students with concerns to contact the LSC.
“We have a great relationship with student organizations,” the statement said.
The stats
As of November, about 3% of student organizations — 22 of 727 — have completed all three required trainings, according to the LSC tracker. Another 86 organizations have attended at least two sessions, and 211 have attended one or more.
With compliance still low and deadlines approaching, Whisenant said the workshops should be refocused on practical, nuts-and-bolts skills for running organizations.
“These workshops should be what they say … ways to improve students in their leadership roles and to run the organizations to benefit the purpose of the organizations, not to finger-point and tell them how they should act,” he said.
Whisenant has already attended two sessions. Under current policy, groups that fall short risk sanctions — including loss of resources and removal from campus — unless the university revises the mandate.
Others questioned whether mandatory leadership tutoring makes sense for routine club operations.
“If you need leadership tutoring to be able to run a chess club, maybe you just shouldn’t be running a chess club,” Lyle said.
Whisenant, for his part, faulted the workshops’ tone and content, not their number, saying they’ve offered him little practical benefit as a student leader.
“They have not shown me how to run a student organization … not even told me how to do the very basics of event planning for student events on and off campus. These workshops have been about feelings. They have been about buzzwords. They have not been about student organization leadership improvement,” Whisenant said.
Lyle said student organizations are central to campus life and a place where students develop their own voices.
“They'll become more aligned with maybe what administration thinks rather than what the student body thinks,” he said.
A solution
All of this puts the university in a bind of its own making. If the goal is to reduce preventable mistakes and ensure basic operational competence, the requirement should match the task.
Hold a funding workshop before spending student-fee dollars. Require travel training before any off-campus trip. Offer a room-reservation workshop before booking a theater. Those steps are hard to cast as ideological and easy to defend as basic stewardship.
By contrast, a universal three-workshop quota tied to recognition treats every organization the same, regardless of what it actually does. It invites questions about who designs the quota. It raises issues about what counts toward it and it prompts the deeper question of why recognition depends on mandatory trainings at all.
USC says students are eager for trainings. So next fall, does USC lock out a rocketry team over missing Workshop 3? Does a service organization lose access to equipment over a missed conference? With only 22 groups compliant and 705 not, is the plan to build leaders or is it to kill off unwanted organizations on campus?
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