Texas Tribune
Students worry UT-Austin is taking Texasâ DEI ban too far
by Kate McGee and Ikram Mohamed, The Texas Tribune – 2024-02-26 06:00:00
SUMMARY: Aaliyah Barlow, UT Austin's Black Student Alliance president, struggles with funding for a conference after the university's response turned cold due to Senate Bill 17, a new law banning diversity-related offices and programs in Texas universities. Barlow and her peers have raised $6,000 of a required $20,000, forcing travel adjustments. UT-Austin closed a multicultural center and ended a scholarship for undocumented students under SB 17, with more programs under threat. Critics say the ban's vague language leads to overcorrection by universities, affecting students and faculty. Texas Exes will host cultural graduation celebrations despite these challenges. Student groups worry about who will take over when they graduate, noting the extra work to continue traditions that the university once supported.
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Aaliyah Barlow needed to raise $20,000 by the end of the month.
As president of the University of Texas at Austinâs Black Student Alliance, a student group, the junior is in charge of securing funding for three dozen of her peers to attend an annual conference for Black student leaders within the Big 12 Athletic Conference. For months, she's been asking different colleges and departments within the university to sponsor their travel, as they've always done before.
But this year, itâs been crickets.
President Jay Hartzellâs office â usually their largest supporter â didn't return emails, she said. Neither did other typically supportive departments. At least one other department flatly said no.
She was told it was because of Senate Bill 17, the new state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion offices, programs and training in Texas public universities.
As of Friday, Barlow said she and her peers have raised about $6,000, which will cover half the students originally set on attending. Instead of renting a bus, they now plan to drive the 14-hour trip. Or they'll meet up with another school along the way to take their bus to the conference.
âItâs been really frustrating, especially since we've been getting money from these places every single year,â Barlow said. âWeâre just a student organization ⦠so I assumed weâd be okay. But thatâs not the case, unfortunately.â
Situations like Barlow's are playing out on college campuses across the state. At UT-Austin in particular, feelings have been fraught with students and advocates saying the school is going above and beyond what's required by the stateâs DEI ban.
Since the law went into effect at the beginning of this year, UT-Austin has closed a beloved multicultural center that housed several student organizations sponsored by the school and ended a scholarship program for undocumented students. This month, the undergraduate college canceled a lecture on finding mentors in higher education through the lens of the LGBTQ student experience after university lawyers argued it could be construed as diversity training. Some students say university officials have gone back on their word, often with little explanation, after promising that certain programs would not be impacted by the ban.
âI don't think people even understood for real what it was until January 1, when they came back and they noticed the [Division of Diversity and Student Engagement] is not here anymore. They noticed the Multicultural Engagement Center letters have been ripped off the wall of this room,â Barlow said. âIt wasn't taken seriously because I don't think people really understood how severe it was until it was already in effect and it was too late.â
Critics of the law say the banâs language is vague and universitiesâ legal teams are advising their clients to play it safe with their interpretation of it. They believe the tendency is to overcorrect, which is ultimately harming students and faculty.
âIt's becoming a tool to usher in a colorblind university system in a way that is evasive of the history of race discrimination, evasive of state-sanctioned exclusion, not to mention attacks on the queer community,â said Antonio Ingram II, a lawyer with the Legal Defense Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based legal organization that focuses on racial justice.
UT-Austin officials have provided little information to students and faculty who have demanded more transparency about how they are interpreting the law. They did not respond to interview requests or a list of written questions.
Amid that silence, students are scrambling to fill the financial gaps and continue traditions the university used to support.
Texasâ DEI ban
Early last year, conservative think tanks started to home in on DEI offices, accusing them of indoctrinating students with left-wing ideology and forcing universities to hire people based on how much they support diversity efforts rather than on merit and achievement. Republican lawmakers agreed and have introduced legislation targeting these offices across the country. Texas became the second state to ban DEI offices, programs and training at public universities, following Florida.
âDEI programs have been shown to be exclusive, they have been shown to be ineffective and they have shown to be politically charged,â state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, the banâs author, said on the Senate floor last year. âMany of these programs have been weaponized to compel speech instead of protecting free speech.â
Over the past few years, DEI offices have become increasingly common at universities. They are typically charged with boosting faculty diversity and helping students from all backgrounds succeed.
These offices often coordinate mentorships, tutoring and support programs to help students from underrepresented groups feel welcome and find a community on their campuses. They also provide spaces for a wide range of student groups to gather, from students of color and LGBTQ students to students with disabilities and veterans. In addition, these offices help departments cast a wide net when searching for job candidates and ensure that universities donât violate federal discrimination laws.
Faculty and students have argued that banning universitiesâ DEI efforts would make it harder to recruit and retain top faculty and could lead some students to feel unwelcome and unsafe on campus. They also argue it walks back years of progress toward making sure that everyone, especially underrepresented students or those previously barred from entry, can succeed in school.
Texasâ DEI ban states that public colleges and universities cannot create diversity offices, hire employees to conduct DEI work, or require any DEI training as a condition for being hired by or admitted to the university. All hiring practices must be âcolor-blind and sex-neutral,â the law says.
The law also lists some areas that it should not affect, including course instruction, faculty research, student organizations, guest speakers, data collection or admissions. It specifies that it does not apply to any âpolicy, practice, procedure, program, or activity to enhance student academic achievement or postgraduate outcomes that is designed and implemented without regard to race, sex, color, or ethnicity.â
In preparation for the lawâs implementation, UT-Austin administrators shared with students and employees guidance from the University of Texas System, which oversees the school, about what is permitted under the ban. For instance, system guidance states that while student organizations are exempt from prohibitions, some of those groups may shut down based on the extent of institutional support they receive from the university.
âAs with all new laws, I fully expect that there will be divided opinions on our campus about both the law itself and its eventual impacts on our University,â Hartzell wrote in a December letter to the campus community. âBut it is the law, and with compassion and respect for all of our community members, we will comply.â
âWhat they said wouldn't happen, happenedâ
The DEI banâs exclusions led students like Guadalupe â a UT-Austin junior who is undocumented and asked to be identified only by her middle name out of fear of making her immigration status public â to believe that some of the programs she relied on throughout her time at the university would not be affected.
She mentioned the Monarch Program, which provided support and scholarships to students from undocumented families or with fluid immigration statuses. It was founded in 2016 by a UT-Austin graduate student, but the university took it over, hiring its first full-time employee in 2021 and funneling university funding for the first time just last year.
Guadalupe stumbled into the program shortly after her laptop died three years ago, a few weeks into her freshman year. She was able to borrow a laptop through Monarchâs technology lending library until she saved enough money to buy a new one. Ever since, sheâs worked with the program to help other students like her stay in school and graduate.
But last month, UT-Austin eliminated the program without a public explanation. According to The Dallas Morning News, internal documents show UT-Austin believed the program violated the stateâs DEI ban and federal law.
Guadalupe said she was surprised UT-Austin ended the program, especially because university officials gave students reassurances last fall that SB 17 would not affect it. Sheâs also frustrated the university didnât give the program a chance to adjust to the new law.
âAll these different programs were being [told], âThis is how your program does not comply with SB 17, this is what you need to change,ââ she said. âAnd that was just not a conversation that was had about Monarch.â
Students also argue SB 17 should not apply to the Monarch Program since it did not implement any race or gender-based programming.
âPeople who are undocumented come from very different backgrounds,â Guadalupe said. âYou can't just point at undocumented folks and be like, âoh, this is specifically like [for] the Latino community or the ⦠Asian community,â because it's a very diverse group.â
In late January, a group of university department chairs sent a letter to UT administrators asking for clarity about the decision to end the Monarch Program.
âWe recognize the immense challenges that SB 17 has created for your offices, but we hope that the process of compliance will not result in throwing out too many babies with the proverbial bath water,â the professors wrote.
They did not receive a response.
Since Monarch was canceled, a student-run organization called Rooted, which also provides support for undocumented students, has taken over some of the services that the program used to provide.
Victoria Uriostegui, a UT-Austin junior and a member of Rooted, said watching the university eliminate Monarch without warning or explanation was exactly the kind of repercussions she warned lawmakers about when she testified against SB 17 at the Texas Capitol last year.
âWhat they said wouldn't happen, happened,â she said. âPrograms that were not supposed to be impacted are impacted. And I think that's just what makes it more infuriating that many students continually testified about these chilling effects. Now we're seeing them come.â
One less safe space
Aneesha Tadikonda felt seen in the universityâs Multicultural Engagement Center.
Home to six student groups â Afrikan American Affairs; the Asian Desi Pacific Islander American Collective; the Latinx Community Affairs; the Native American and Indigenous Collective; Queer and Trans Black Indigenous People of Color Agency; and Students for Equity and Diversity â the center served as a meeting place for students of various underrepresented backgrounds and identities.
When she was a freshman, it was a place she felt comfortable asking for help as she navigated the daunting first year of college. Staffers there knew she wanted to go to medical school and would send her free study guides for the exam required to apply and discount codes for study materials. She made friends through movie screenings and book clubs. But she especially loved the opportunity to network with other Asian American students and leaders on and off campus.
âI heavily depended on [the center] for finding a community of people that had the same goals as me,â Tadikonda said. âOutside of class, that's very difficult to find, especially as someone who's really involved with activism and their identity.â
Students like Tadikonda were shocked when they learned early this year that the center was abruptly shut down in response to the stateâs DEI ban. The university didnât send out any formal communication to students regarding the centerâs closure.
When students returned to campus from winter break, the space was still open for students to work in, but the staff was gone and the centerâs name was removed. Since the ban does not apply to student organizations, the culturally specific groups once housed within the center were allowed to continue operating, but only if they disaffiliated from the university and stopped receiving financial support from the school.
Just like with the Monarch Program, students said the MEC didnât get a chance to make changes to comply with SB 17. The centerâs staff was given notice of the center's closure about 10 days before the ban went into effect, students said.
Students are demanding that the university reestablishes the center in a way thatâs compliant with SB 17. They feel that shutting down the center went beyond the requirements of the law and pointed out that other Texas universities, like the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of North Texas, kept their versions of the center open.
âI think our proximity to the Capitol is a large part of it. I think donors are a large part of it. But I would 100% say it's an over-compliance,â said Kelly Solis, a UT-Austin senior and co-director of Latinx Community Affairs.
The MEC was originally founded in 1988 by students who felt the university lacked proper support systems for Black and Hispanic students. Ten years later, the universityâs Office of Student Affairs absorbed the center and gave it two full-time staff members.
The MECâs abrupt closure has left students with the burden of preserving programs that previously received university funding and have been essential to their college experience.
That includes one of the most anticipated events that the six student groups within the MEC helped organize each year: cultural graduation ceremonies, which are smaller celebrations hosted for Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ students, among others.
âIt's such a big accomplishment when you come to UT, and maybe as a first generation student or a child of immigrants ⦠and be away from home for the first time,â Tadikonda said. âIt breaks my heart that now we have to work 100 times harder just to give people what they deserve, to give them the recognition that they might not get in a university-wide graduation.â
Organizers said these ceremonies highlight themes, like family, that are important for the groups they represent and that arenât always part of university-wide graduations. For instance, families are invited to participate in GraduAsian, the ceremony that commemorates the achievements of Asian students. In the past, speakers have publicly thanked them for attending and helping graduates through their college journey.
The student groups that used to be housed at the MEC now say they're unclear if they can even reserve space on campus to host their events.
âPeople are scared, people who work for the university,â Solis said. âThey might want to give us money or might want to provide resources in some way for our events, but don't know if they can. So just out of fear, uncertainty and a lack of transparency, they might just say, âSorry, we can't provide anything at this time.ââ
The student groups have created GoFundMe pages seeking donations to help cover the expenses of hosting celebrations for this yearâs graduating class. The universityâs alumni organization, Texas Exes, recently announced that theyâd host cultural graduations for students, according to The Daily Texan.
Ariana Seeloff, a senior and co-director of the Afrikan American Affairs Collective, said this particular class â whose high school graduations were disrupted by COVID in 2020 â are determined to host these celebrations.
âTo have this happen four years later, and not be able to have a proper send-off from college for these degrees that we've worked so hard to earn, it's unimaginable,â she said. âThis senior class deserves to be celebrated.â
But students say itâs unclear what will happen to culturally specific graduations after this year.
Lecture or training?
Paige Schilt, a former lecturer at UT-Austin, was thrilled when she was invited by the universityâs undergraduate college to give a talk this semester about how to find a mentor as a student navigating higher education for the first time.
Schilt, a therapist, teacher and writer, planned to lean on her own personal experience as a LGBTQ student as she found ways to advocate for herself as a scholar. Staff and administrators were excited about the lecture, she said.
But in mid-January she got an email saying that UT-Austinâs legal office had raised concerns the lecture could violate SB 17 because it âwould fall within a prohibited training, activity, or program.â
SB 17 prohibits mandatory diversity training, which is defined as training developed in reference to race, color or gender identity. But Schilt said her lecture was not training. SB 17 does not prohibit any DEI-related scholarly research or creative work, and faculty are still allowed to share it on campus.
Schilt said she tried to work with the undergraduate college to shift the lecture's format and instead give a reading from her memoir in progress in the hope of appeasing the universityâs lawyers, but was unsuccessful. Ultimately, her talk was replaced with another lecture.
âI was really sad and discouraged to think that this law was having such a chilling effect, that basically any person from one of the marginalized communities targeted by SB 17 speaking from their own experience was now, by definition, a training,â she said.
Lauren Gutterman, an American Studies professor who focuses on LGBTQ issues, said she felt the universityâs response to Schiltâs lecture was a misinterpretation of the law.
âThis makes no sense to me as the lecture was not a training, it was not required, and it was not limited to any one group of students,â she said. âThe only grounds I can see for their concern is that it had to do with LGBTQ+ issues.â
Schilt, who taught a class on LGBTQ history at UT-Austin last semester, said it was painful to watch studentsâ disappointment and sadness last semester when the university reorganized the Gender and Sexuality Center, which is now called the Womenâs Community Center.
âAs a teacher who had a strong connection with my students, it was really hard to kind of help them navigate through all the feelings that they were having about, âwhat does this mean about how welcome I am here?ââ she said.
Who will carry the torch?Â
In his December message to the UT-Austin community, Hartzell said he would follow up with students in January regarding the implementation of SB 17. He hasnât done so as of late February.
While student groups are trying to fill in the gaps left by the loss of university resources, they worry about who will help incoming students feel supported and welcomed on campus next year. Many of the students leading these groups will graduate in May.
Guadalupe said entering college can be a stressful and isolating experience. She said sheâs scared for underrepresented students who wonât have access to safe places to gather on campus like she did.
âHaving not had their support and their resources, my college experience would be completely different,â she said. âI think about how much more they're going to struggle.â
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Disclosure: Texas Exes, University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Odessa shuts off entire water system due to water line leak
by By Carlos Nogueras Ramos, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-11 22:36:15
SUMMARY: Odessa, Texas, faced a massive water outage after a leak detected earlier in the week led to a full shutdown of the water supply on Saturday, affecting tens of thousands. Despite attempts to avoid disruptions during the workweek, by Saturday crews had to turn off water completely for repairs. The city, located in the oil-rich Permian Basin, has been challenged by aging infrastructure and increasing demand. A boil-water notice remains in effect post-restoration. City leaders have warned of potential future issues and plan to discuss the fallout, including costs and water lost, at the next council meeting.
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ODESSA — An outage left tens of thousands of residents without running water on Saturday afternoon after crews could not isolate a leak that city leaders say began earlier in the week.
Water also stopped flowing for county residents outside the city limits, a majority of whom rely on Odessa's water plant as well, Mayor Javier Joven said.
The city shut off its entire water supply Saturday at 6:50 p.m. and issued a public notice roughly two hours later. By then, many people on social media said they went the day without running water. The city said it did not announce the outage earlier because some households still had water trickling out of the faucets, albeit on very low pressure.
The outage is the latest in a yearslong race to keep up with the 700 miles of rapidly aging and deteriorating water infrastructure in Odessa. At the center of the Permian Basin's oil patches and one of its fastest-growing cities, Odessa is struggling to adapt to an increasing demand for water and other city services. In 2022, a water line break left the city without water to drink, wash, or flush toilets amid a summer heatwave.
Although city leaders expect to restore water service by midnight, a boil-water notice issued early Saturday will remain in effect as long as 24 hours after crews bring the pumps back online.
Joven expects similar water line breaks in the coming months because of years of neglect. Odessa's utilities director last April warned that if the infrastructure was left unattended, the system could experience “catastrophic failures,” the Odessa American reported.
“More breaks are going to happen,” Joven said Saturday night.
City Manager John Beckmeyer said crews discovered a leaking valve on a main line on Tuesday but decided to wait before fixing the leak to avoid shutting down the water supply during the work week. At the time, officials told the public they believed the leak and the repair would be isolated. In the days that followed, water streamed down busy 42nd Street as maintenance crews attempted to release excess water pressure.
On Saturday, repair crews determined they would have to remove the valve and replace it, forcing them to shut off the water supply at the source.
City leaders said they will address the outage during the upcoming city council meeting on Tuesday, where they plan to confirm the amount of water the city and its residents lost — and how much it cost them.
The water line break caused disruptions throughout the county. Restaurants closed their doors due to the lack of water while others used their reserves. Residents flocked to supermarkets to purchase bottled water to make due.
“It's one of those things where we're always on high alert,” said Alejandro Barrientos, owner of Curb Side Bistro, a local restaurant. Barrientos said he and his staff had been monitoring the water pressure on Friday. When the city issued its first notice on Saturday, the restaurant's staff turned to its backup water reserves.
“You use that and pray you have enough to get through your shift,” he said.
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UT-Austin students host Latinx graduation despite DEI ban
by By Sneha Dey, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-10 20:36:17
SUMMARY: Liany Serrano Oviedo organized the Latinx graduation at UT Austin, a significant achievement celebrating cultural heritage and identity. However, due to Senate Bill 17 banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, public universities cut funding for such events. Students, like Serrano Oviedo, took the initiative, raising $9,000 and securing a venue through community support. These cultural ceremonies recognize the sacrifices of Latino families, with many students being the first in their families to graduate. Despite challenges, including a post-pandemic world and a hostile political landscape, the students ensured the continuation of their cherished traditions, signaling the resilience and determination of their community.
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Liany Serrano Oviedo crouched in her yellow graduation dress, stared at the mirror and carefully blotted her tears with a wipe. It was a rare moment for the 22-year-old University of Texas at Austin senior to be alone and gather her composure.
Serrano Oviedo had been in high-performance mode all Thursday morning, making laps to get everything ready for the Latinx graduation ceremony she planned, sometimes breaking out into a jog to get from one side of the venue to another.
But she had a moment of frailty while talking with a donor who helped sponsor the event. All of her hard work in the last four years — getting her degree and organizing Thursday's ceremony — was for her Venezuelan parents, she said.
“This graduation is a big deal because a big chunk of it is bilingual,” Serrano Orviedo said. “And my mom's English isn't that great. And so this ceremony is one where I know 100% she's understanding everything that's being said.”
For decades, subsets of Texas college graduates — from Latinx to LGBTQ students — have organized intimate events separate from the larger commencement ceremony to celebrate the completion of their degrees in the context of their identities and cultural heritage.
But this is the first year UT-Austin and other Texas public universities cut funding and staff support for such ceremonies in response to Senate Bill 17, a new state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Students across the state like Serrano Oviedo fought tooth and nail to rescue cultural graduations, often taking on the burden of planning and finding funding for the ceremonies. The Latinx graduation ceremony took place days before UT-Austin's commencement, which will be held Saturday.
“It doesn't matter how many obstacles you're going to throw at our community,” said Serrano Oviedo. “We're still going to thrive and we're going to find other ways.”
Students take the lead
For years at UT-Austin, thousands of Latino family members would pack the on-campus Gregory Gymnasium at the end of the school year to see their graduates walk the stage. Some graduates used to wear serape soles made of traditional Mexican cloth. It was the only ceremony where the program was read in English and Spanish.
The now-defunct Multicultural Engagement Center would also pay for surprises for the families, like live Latin bands and food and floral decorations that matched the serapes.
But to comply with SB 17, public universities in Texas have shuttered the multicultural centers that used to organize cultural graduation ceremonies like the Latinx celebration.
Lawmakers who supported the passage of SB 17 last year argued that DEI programs and training were indoctrinating students with left-wing ideology and forced universities to make hires based on their support of diversity efforts rather than on merit and achievement.
The ban did not stop students in the graduating class of 2024 from organizing their own event. Serrano Oviedo and other seniors raised $9,000 with help from Latino leaders across the state. Austin City Council Member José “Chito” Vela secured a local performing arts center for the students to host the ceremony off campus. The League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Latino civil rights group in the U.S., stepped in to pay for that venue.
Students graduating this year have already been shaped by a unique set of global and political forces. Many of them graduated high school and entered college in the thick of the pandemic, which means they missed out on a formal ceremony back then. And now they're leaving at a time where pro-Palestinian protests have broken out across campus, including UT, leading to dozens of student arrests.
On Thursday, as UT-Austin history professor Emilio Zamora adjusted the satin hood for one student at the Latinx ceremony, he called the survival of the tradition “a declaration of independence” from public institutions.
“These students are demonstrating they will have the final say,” he said. “It is a demonstration of our resilience. The university has failed us, but we have risen to the occasion with our youth.”
A nod to family
Under the pink and purple lighting of the nearly-full auditorium, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles clapped, cheered and clapped again.
Cultural ceremonies often elevate themes that are important to those groups of students — like family to the Latinx community — and aren't always part of university-wide graduations.
“Gracias a mi mami y papi”— “Thank you to my mother and father” in Spanish — one students' graduation cap read. Another one read, “Sus sacrificios y apoyo son la razón por la cual lo logre”: “Your sacrifices and support are the reason I made it.”
For some students and faculty, celebrating the accomplishments of Latinx students is a critical recognition of the hard road they journeyed on to get their degree. Latino college students are often the first in their family to get a college degree. That makes cultural ceremonies, which acknowledge the generational sacrifices and obstacles that families have overcome, all the more significant.
They're also an important gesture if Texas universities want to continue to recruit, retain and graduate Latino students, supporters say.
Despite being designated a Hispanic-serving institution, UT-Austin's enrollment still lags behind in representing the state's makeup. Hispanic residents represent the biggest share of Texas' population — 40% — but only about 25% of students at UT-Austin are Hispanic.
“The cornerstone of a successful Texas is to be doing all of [these cultural events]. In essence, it's going to affect academics and how people of color perceive the state,” said Katherine Ospina, a UT senior who raised the funds to pay for the ceremony. “Texas is an extremely diverse state and we need to capitalize on that diversity.”
Domingo Garcia, the president of LULAC, the Latino civil rights group that covered the cost of the venue, said he worked two jobs to be the first in his family to graduate from college. Preserving cultural graduations in the face of the DEI ban sends a signal that Latino culture has a place in the state, Garcia said.
“People don't understand the sacrifices that parents, many of them working class, have made to have that son or daughter attend UT and what they've gone through to get to that place,” said Garcia, who is a former state representative. “To not be allowed to celebrate your culture, to celebrate who you're from and what your family's from, it's really immoral.”
Ospina said she could not let the class of 2024 be “lost in the ether” of a post-SB 17 reality.
On Thursday, as the last few family members filtered out of the venue with their graduates at the end of the ceremony, Serrano Oviedo balanced a stack of leftover orange cords and a plastic H-E-B bag.
Serrano Oviedo said she is trying to secure funding from the city of Austin for future ceremonies. A new round of students will have to step in to do the work of organizing, but she's hopeful the tradition will continue.
“Everything the state Legislature and university threw our way, we overcame,” Serrano Oviedo said.
Ikram Mohamed contributed to this report.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Disclosure: H-E-B and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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UT-Austin lecturer arrested at protest, then fired
by By Annie Xia, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-10 17:46:04
SUMMARY: Richard Heyman, a UT Austin lecturer with 18 years of tenure, was arrested and subsequently fired over his involvement in a pro-Palestinian campus protest. Charged with a Class B misdemeanor for allegedly interfering with police duties, his actions during the demonstration are under dispute; his lawyer contends the physical altercation was initiated by an officer. Heyman's dismissal has amplified concerns among Texas faculty about recent legislation affecting academic freedoms and job security. Texas legislators have passed laws targeting diversity initiatives and altering tenure processes, resulting in job cuts and increased oversight of university faculty.
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A University of Texas at Austin lecturer was arrested and fired this week in connection with his participation in a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus, raising fresh concerns among faculty members and free speech advocates about academic protections in the state.
Richard Heyman, who has taught at UT for 18 years in the College of Liberal Arts, was arrested Wednesday by the Texas Department of Public Safety and charged with interfering with public duties, a Class B misdemeanor. The charge stems from Heyman's participation in an April 29 pro-Palestinian demonstration in which authorities arrested around 80 protesters who had set up an encampment on campus.
The university fired Heyman on Thursday through an email, according to his lawyer, Gerry Morris. Heyman was scheduled to teach three classes during the upcoming fall semester.
According to Heyman's arrest affidavit, DPS troopers accused him of yelling expletives at law enforcement during the protest, pulling away a trooper's bike and making a motion with a water bottle “as if he were going to swing it and hit” a trooper.
Citing three video recordings of Heyman's actions, Morris disagreed with the affidavit's characterization of his client as physically disruptive.
Morris said the officer initiated physical contact and pushed Heyman, which caused Heyman to grab onto the bike's handlebar for balance. Morris said he plans to ask the Travis County Attorney's office to dismiss the case.
“This is a politically charged atmosphere that this occurred in,” Morris said. “I think in a normal atmosphere, the prosecutor would look at this, drop it pretty quickly. But I'm not sure that it's going to move very quickly given what we're in the middle of.”
Heyman's firing comes amid rising concern among Texas faculty groups that state legislators have passed laws that have led to increased scrutiny and insecurity regarding their jobs. Anne Lewis, an executive board member of the Texas State Employees Union, linked Heyman's firing to what she said are broader moves by the state to restrict academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
“I think it is an attack on higher education and its core values, and Richard is just one of many that is getting caught up in this attack,” Lewis said. “He's the worst so far.”
Last year Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 17, which banned diversity, equity and inclusion offices at Texas universities, and Senate Bill 18, which set out to terminate tenure at state universities but ended up only requiring schools to provide clear guidelines for how to obtain and keep tenure. Complying with SB 17 resulted in firings at universities across the state, with UT-Austin laying off dozens of employees earlier this year.
The state Legislature's Higher Education Committee will likely monitor the implementation of both laws and consider regulating faculty senates in the next legislative session, according to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's agenda for lawmakers during the interim period before the next legislative session. Faculty senates represent faculty members in open meetings to make recommendations on a wide variety of topics such as undergraduate degree programs and student services.
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The post UT-Austin lecturer arrested at protest, then fired appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
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