Inside UNA’s two-year plan to disguise DEI before state law banned it
August 28, 2025
The University of North Alabama was slowly and incrementally disguising its vast Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programming for two years, in anticipation of the state’s DEI ban signed last year.
“We’ve known that this bill has been in the works for a long time,” then-UNA employee at the Mitchell-West center, Alyson Bergner, revealed on hidden camera.
“That’s why two years ago, it dissolved into just officers. And then from then it was like and then they will do the title change. And so it was kind of slow so no one really noticed,” she explained to Accuracy in Media’s undercover investigators.
According to her, each of the university’s colleges had a “DEI Director,” which has “been changed to like ‘multicultural’ something something.”
The bottom line, Bergner said, is “Nothing really changed.”
Business is going on as usual when it comes to DEI programming at UNA, she told AIM investigators. “We’re still trying to serve students, right? We have just had to [find] tricker, more niche ways to do that.”
When AIM President Adam Guillette asked Bergner about her extensive comments about covert DEI, she repeatedly said she could not comment.
Afterward, Guillette headed to the office of UNA Provost Brien Smith to ask for his reaction. But the provost was allegedly unable to meet with AIM.
AIM has reason to believe that Bergner may no longer be employed by UNA. However, the strategic and secretive DEI efforts certainly continue on UNA’s campus.
The state law banning DEI education in public institutions was signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, R-Ala., in March of 2024, and went into effect that fall.
“My administration has and will continue to value Alabama’s rich diversity, however, I refuse to allow a few bad actors on college campuses – or wherever else for that matter – to go under the acronym of DEI, using taxpayer funds, to push their liberal political movement counter to what the majority of Alabamians believe,” she said upon signing the measure.
Bergner also pointed out to AIM investigators that the measure is “super, super vague” and gives schools the ability to justify their continued DEI instruction and claim ignorance.
She even suggested that lawmakers across party lines design such laws to be vague on purpose, so that DEI offices are out of sight to please voters–even if they’re still operating covertly.
She described what she says public institutions and agencies across Alabama are doing when it comes to DEI: “Visually, what you see is that it’s gone. But really nothing, nothing really changed.”
Alabama may have passed a law banning DEI, but that is clearly not stopping schools like UNA and employees like Bergner from doing everything in their power to keep it alive.
But Accuracy in Media is holding them accountable.
To send a message to UWA’s Trustees, visit deiinalabama.com to share your thoughts about Bergner’s description of UNA’s DEI infrastructure.