8 MAY 28-JUNE 3, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Call Elaine Lustig, PhD .......................................................... at 303-369-7770 Needing Your Emotional ....... Animal W/ You? For eligible people who need their emotional support animal to accompany them at/or away from home, I am available to provide the documentation and counseling. CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED around high-potency THC. What she can- not do as a sitting member of the Board of Regents is actively work to try to take funding from this university,” says Michele Ames, spokesperson for the Board of Re- gents. “Regent James violated her fi duciary responsibility to the university by trying to get funding taken away. ... That’s what’s at issue here.” How did we get here? In January 2025, James contacted Polis’ offi ce about her concerns regarding the marijuana campaign and was informed that the governor already intended to request the campaign’s state funding be cut for unrelated reasons, according to a university-funded investigation. James went on to publicly call for the funding to be revoked and in- stead directed toward social equity cannabis businesses. The Joint Budget Committee ultimately denied the governor’s proposed cuts, grant- ing the full $2 million in funding to the School of Public Health for the campaign, according to the investigation. Polis denounced the board’s handling of the situation and its investigation into James. His spokesperson told the Boulder Daily Camera in July that the governor is “mystifi ed as to how CU could justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating a regent that was just doing her job as an elected offi cial.” The university reported spending $462,900 on investigating James and another regent. Attorney General Phil Weiser has also questioned the constitutionality of the cen- sorship. “The First Amendment protects the right to free expression. Neither a White House executive order nor a public university policy can override this fundamental right,” Wesier wrote on X in July. “I am concerned that the CU Board of Regents action sanctioning Re- gent Wanda James did just that. ... The Board of Regents would do well to reconsider its action against her.” James stressed that the governor inde- pendently decided to request the funding cut long before she spoke to his offi ce. Ames argues that the timeline is not relevant; the point is that James “actively worked to try to take funding from the university.” Ames also defends the intention behind the campaign’s illustrations of Black babies and teenagers, which James called racist. Ames notes that the campaign also included illustrations of white characters and photo- graphs of models of various races. She shared numerous images created for the campaign with Westword, including fi fteen illustra- tions of people. Thirteen of the illustrations depict characters with dark brown skin. Two depict characters with white skin. “It was always intended to be inclusive,” Ames says. “The idea behind the campaign was that everybody could see themselves in it somewhere. ... Regent James took issue with a few of those images and they were removed immediately and that’s where this story should have ended, but it did not. It was the additional actions she took, which she has publicly said she took, that have created the rest of this story.” James is the only Black regent currently on the board, and was the fi rst Black woman to become a regent in over 43 years when she was elected in 2022. She is just the second Black woman and the third Black person ever elected as a CU regent. James alleges that her censorship was not only because she criticized the mari- juana campaign, but because she has long called out racism and inequality in the university system. When the board voted to censure James in July, the lone dissenting vote came from Regent Nolbert Chavez, the only other person of color on the board, James’ lawsuit notes. “This is the accumulation of silencing me from speaking out about things that make this university uncomfortable,” James said. “This is a complete retaliation for a speech that I did for Black History Month last February, calling out the university for its failure to hire people of color at the highest levels.” James’ supporters have publicly threat- ened to pursue legal action over her censor- ship since at least September, but James claimed she never intended to fi le a lawsuit until it became clear the matter was not going to be settled otherwise. “I have been asking and asking this board, our general counsel, the president of the university. I have done everything humanly possible to get my rights back as a regent, and they have denied it at every turn,” James said. In July, Regent Callie Rennison told the Daily Camera that the board held “count- less” meetings to discuss resolving the issue, but James was allegedly unwilling to com- promise. James called that claim “entirely untrue” during the press conference. The board lifted sanctions against Gal- legos in 2023 following his participation in “remedial measures,” according to a board letter from May 2023. Those included Gal- legos undergoing sexual harassment and misconduct training, and demonstrating a “willingness to help the university learn and grow.” Ames says the board “has both formally and informally tried to resolve this matter” with James, adding that “they have been open to lifting sanctions, but so far there’s been no agreement.” Ames declined to comment further when asked about the potential conditions for lift- ing the sanctions and whether it was James or other regents who could not agree on the terms. At the press conference, James said she had been asking for the sanctions to be lifted for 322 days. “We have been forced into this situation,” James said. “We’re demand- ing that things change.” The fi ling of the lawsuit comes just over a month before the June primary election, in which James is running to represent the First Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The day of James’ press conference, Polis was sanctioned for pardoning Tina Peters – an act he attributed largely to protecting the free speech rights of the former Mesa County clerk who continues to deny the 2020 election results. Email the author at hannah.metzger@westword. com. News continued from page 6
