What Will Fill the IDEA Center’s Absence?

Plymouth State’s now-vacant IDEA Center is located at the foremost point of our campus: at the juncture of Main Street, Route 175, and the edge of campus itself. In many ways, this seems to be the ideal place to have a building focused on fostering Plymouth State’s community, connection, and belonging. The IDEA Center, as described on PSU’s website, “supports a welcoming and caring environment for students and employees at Plymouth State University.”

But, as reported by the Union Leader, much of the website has been erased or sanitized. An Instagram post from 2022 describes the IDEA Center in more depth: “We support belonging and academic success for students across intersectional identities and experience among our Black, Latinx, Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, and disabled student community.”

Now, the IDEA Center is closed. It happened so quickly that many students may not have even known that the IDEA Center had closed until President Birx sent the student body an email addressing the situation. Particularly keen students would have noticed old IDEA Center staff looking for new positions or announcing employment elsewhere over the summer, as well as their quiet removal from PSU promotional materials. Save a few listening sessions held by Student Life, the IDEA Center was closed rather quietly.

But the political storm that led to the IDEA Center’s closing has been brewing for a while now. It only recently spilled over into PSU’s campus when HB-2, the State’s budget, passed in the New Hampshire legislature this July. Not only did HB-2 greatly cut funding for higher education in New Hampshire (by about 30% this year, and more to come), it also snuck in anti-DEI language. Specifically, the bill prohibits DEI initiatives from taking place in public schools and government entities, including public universities. This part of HB-2 is currently being challenged in court, which raises questions about the old IDEA Center building: What’s next? Will PSU choose to bring the IDEA Center back even if this part of HB-2 is overturned?

No public effort has been made to rehire any “IDEA”-related positions, which could be the result of HB-2’s DEI prohibition or the ever-shrinking budget for NH’s public higher education institutions. Currently, initiatives once managed by the IDEA Center are largely being organized through Student Life and the Office of Student Advocacy and Wellbeing.

Before it quietly closed this semester, the throughline of the IDEA Center was rather simple: inclusion for all. No students were barred from entering the space; everyone was welcome. And yet, PSU has seemingly ‘pre-complied’ with state legislation passed in July, even though the DEI ban is at least for now blocked by Federal Courts.

In the midst of this political web, it is difficult to understand what will become of 1 High Street or diversity at PSU. Plymouth is an overbearingly homogenous space in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, ability, and sexuality. Anti-DEI legislation further homogenizes this state, which is one of the last things New Hampshire needs, on both a human level and an economic level; already, around 57% of New Hampshire students leave the state to pursue education
elsewhere. New Hampshire continually ranks 50 out of 50—that is, last—for funding for higher education. Amidst all of this, the last thing that we should be doing is cutting funding for initiatives that serve a wide and diverse audience, which may bring in students from out of state.

1 High Street has long served as a cornerstone of the Plymouth community, though it has not always been the IDEA Center. As a matter of fact, it only became the IDEA Center in 2022, after many years of existing as the Ecohouse.

The Ecohouse was a housing space meant to emphasize sustainability, low energy consumption, and low waste. The building itself was retrofitted with low-VOC paints and a solar hot water system, as well as a composting system. The goal was to show sustainability on our campus, speak to Plymouth’s connection to nature, and allow students with environmental interests to connect. In a way, that goal is similar to that of the IDEA Center. Creating a third space for students with shared interests to grow together has always been at the heart of this building.

Furthermore, it’s interesting to see how this building, right on the roundabout before campus, has historically stood for various social justice campaigns, particularly ones that may be “forward-thinking” or “trendy” in the era in which they were founded. Both the Ecohouse and the IDEA Center speak to a need within the Plymouth community, but they go about it in different ways. One simply has been devalued and disavowed by the state legislature.

As this empty building sits on the corner of campus, it’s strange to imagine what will become of this space. In the polarizing political environment of 2025, are there any social justice campaigns that Plymouth State University will feel comfortable promoting as a cornerstone of our campus identity? Will this become a student space? Or just another office space?

Even if the space is never filled, perhaps an empty building would make just as powerful a political message as the IDEA Center and the Ecohouse did—one that speaks to the harrowing status of New Hampshire higher education, state funding, and the legislature’s care for young scholars.