From the moment Marcus arrived on campus, Project 2025’s mandates felt like a straitjacket: Ethnic Studies 201 was suspended, citing “new guidelines under Project 2025,” the department explained that any course “focused on race, power, or systemic critique” had been put on hold. Fanon and Du Bois vanished from syllabi, were swapped out for abstract treatises on “universal rights” written by Enlightenment figures—without context on how those same thinkers rationalized colonial rule while justifying slavery. The Multicultural Alliance lost its name and purpose. In seminar discussions stripped of context, “universal rights” became a hollow mantra, while the library’s empty shelves—once lined with Morrison and hooks—echoed the loss of critical perspectives. The vibrant debates Marcus had imagined dissolved into scripted bullet points, leaving him grasping for the critical tools he’d come to college to master.

When members protested, they were reminded that under Project 2025, “equity initiatives” must remain “ideologically neutral.” Marcus watched friends shrink into reticent versions of themselves, unwilling to claim the very stories that had brought them together.

Even the library felt the chill. The new Collection Review Board flagged dozens of titles—autobiographies by activists, histories of indigenous resistance, modern critiques of liberalism—as “too narrowly focused on identity issues.” Late one evening, Marcus peeked into the stacks and saw empty shelves that once held Morrison’s novels and CRT essays. The silence of those missing voices echoed through the aisles.

Refusing to accept a whitewashed education, Marcus and a few classmates retreated to the student union café, trading smuggled PDFs and hosting underground seminars. There, they read primary sources, drafted petitions, and invited a retired professor to help reconstruct erased histories. It was in that same café that Mariana found him, tablet in hand, and introduced ATEP’s decolonial curriculum framework—a blueprint for rebuilding critical discourse on campus.

Meanwhile, across campus, Arianna was battling her own frustrations: a syllabus that paid lip service to diversity yet lacked any meaningful engagement with communities of color. She reached out to ATEP, and within days a consultant was on a video call, weaving her passion for decolonial studies into a course plan that satisfied accreditation requirements and Common Core standards—while embedding equity-centered assessments to track both critical analysis and cultural insight.

Armed with ATEP’s digital library, Arianna infused her lessons with documentary clips on indigenous land stewardship, works by Black feminist theorists, and interactive mapping tools that traced colonial trade routes. Her interdisciplinary modules—co-designed with ATEP staff—blended anthropology, literature, and genetic research, inviting students to reconstruct history from the ground up. Guest speakers, community elders, and personalized tutorials rounded out the experience, ensuring every learner could unpack complex theories and refine their own research.

Beyond content and design, ATEP connected Arianna with a growing network of student-scholars and community elders who became guest speakers, mentors, and co-authors on her capstone project. Those relationships deepened her cohort’s shared commitment to justice and reinforced the art of critical thinking—teaching every student to spot coded language in policy texts, question “neutral” standards, and propose transformative alternatives. And when a few students needed extra support, ATEP’s personalized tutorials stepped in, offering one-on-one coaching to unpack complex theories or refine a research poster.

By the semester’s end, both Marcus’s clandestine seminars and Arianna’s redesigned curriculum had transformed their classrooms into living narratives. Students didn’t just consume facts—they interrogated power, reclaimed erased stories, and envisioned a truly inclusive future. In ATEP, they found the tools to counter Project 2025’s censorship and nurture self-realization for every voice.