Kirk Watson, Running Again for Mayor, Wants Austinites to Look Forward

byKrissi Reeves

Watson, who was mayor from 1997-2001, says Austin needs a mayor with long-term, forward-looking direction —  not someone simply reacting to the day-to-day issues facing one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. 

George Clinton Art Exhibit  ‘Grooves from the Deep’ in East Austin

The Carver Museum exhibit, “Grooves from the Deep and the Space Math of George Clinton,” opened March 10 and will run through June 19. It’s the first public museum showing for Clinton, who debuted his visual art in a solo exhibition in a private gallery in New Orleans in 2021.

Carre Adams, Carver Museum culture and arts education manager, said Clinton’s visual art is an extension of his music — a singular form of eclectic psychedelic funk that he performs in outrageous costumes with his band Parliament Funkadelic.
The exhibit features dozens of mixed-media paintings made by the artist, album covers from his records, posters, videos and photographs. 

Nurses Rally at Capitol to Fight for Workplace Safety

byAndrew Logan

Several dozen Texas nurses demanded workplace changes at a rally outside the Capitol May 12.

Increased Production Could Lead to More Methane in the Permian Basin

bySamuel Stark 

Beneath the stark, dusty landscape of West Texas lie copious energy-rich substances that have fueled American automobilse and the Texas economy for over a century. These resources are now playing a role in America’s response to the war in Ukraine, raising new concerns for environmental advocates

How a UT-Austin Program is Helping Students of Color Study Abroad 

byCristela Jones

During the 2017-18 academic year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, about 11% of all U.S. college students studied abroad, according to reporting from Inside Higher Ed. Of those who studied abroad, Black students comprised 5.5%, Hispanic students 10.6% and Asian students 8.6%, while white students accounted for 70%, according to data from the Association of International Educators. 

About 4.7% of Black UT-Austin students studied abroad in the 2018-19 school year, Heather Thompson, director of the university’s education abroad department, told Reporting Texas. Among all UT-Austin students, about 8.5% study abroad annually.

The Global Leadership Program is helping to change the way students of color study abroad at UT by recruiting students of color and first-generation college students, offering study-abroad scholarships and building leadership programs for student success.

UT Professors: ‘Anti-Critical Race Theory’ Law Is Attempt to Avoid Historical Truth

byEniola Longe

In a series of interviews with UT professors in March and April, most said the law is an affront to the teaching of historical truth regarding racism.

City Council Again Discusses Austin Opera House Redevelopment

byVeronica Apodaca

The dispute over a proposed 1,200-seat music venue on the site of the old Austin Opera House continued to flare during an Austin City Council meeting Thursday. 

Reporting Texas TV – May 5, 2022

byReporting Texas TV Staff

Journalism students from Moody College at the University of Texas produced their sixth and final newscast of the semester on May 5, 2022. This week’s reports include a rally demanding increased pay and other benefits for many Austin Independent School District employees, efforts to unionize by workers at a campus-area Starbucks, and the announcement of […]

AISD Teachers Rally for Living Wage and More Planning Time

byEniola Longe

AUSTIN, Texas — Participants at the “At What Cost” rally on April 28 chanted “hey hey ho ho, [Superintendent Stephanie] Elizalde’s got to go!” and held signs with statements like “All classified workers deserve a $6.50 pay raise” as they expressed dissatisfaction and impatience with the Austin Independent School District. Organized by Education Austin, the […]

Texas Relays, the Largest Predominantly Black Event in Austin, Returns

byKevin Malcolm Jr.

For the first time in three years, more than 5,000 high school, college and professional track athletes and tens of thousands of spectators from around the country came together for the Texas Relays.

Professional Bull Riding is Coming to Austin

byKevin Malcolm Jr.

AUSTIN, Texas – College sports have thrived for decades in the city that bleeds orange and white. However, over the past two decades, the pride in green and black has grown with the arrival of professional hockey, soccer, and now bull riding wearing those colors.  The Austin Gamblers are a professional bull riding team that […]

West Campus Starbucks Employees Protest Union Busting

byStephanie Molina

AUSTIN, Texas – Starbucks baristas gathered at the West Campus Starbucks at the intersection of 24th and Nueces Street on Saturday to hold a demonstration against union busting in their store. The baristas announced a petition to unionize in early March making them the first in Austin to do so.  Amanda Garcia, a UT student […]

Texas Family Among Many in the US, Western Europe Taking in Ukrainian Refugees

byJennifer Errico

Diana Mykoliv woke up early on the morning of Feb. 24 for flight attendant training in the United Arab Emirates. Her hair clipped back and uniform pressed, she headed out her apartment door when she received a text from her mother.

“It’s happening, daughter.” The message in Ukrainian stopped her in her tracks.

“My heart just fell from my chest,” Mykoliv, a Ukrainian native, said. “The worst fears I could have ever imagined of the situation were just brought to light. I couldn’t believe it.”

The same morning at 5 a.m. in Kyiv, Mykoliv’s fiancé Oleksandr awoke to explosions of ballistic missiles. In a frenzy, he packed documents, money, some clothes and a Stephen King book, then headed to the train station to flee the city among the sound of alarms.

“I couldn’t sleep for three days,” Oleksandr said. “Air alarms sound every day, sometimes for hours and it just leaves me shaking.”

Mykoliv, 3,000 miles away from her home, felt hopeless as Russian forces marched into her country, uprooting and threatening the lives of her friends, family and fiancé. According to the BBC, President Biden and the policymakers in the European Union responded by issuing severe sanctions targeting four of Russia’s largest banks, its oil and gas industry, and Western exports (especially technology) to the country.

Conservative UT-Austin Students Say They Often Feel Marginalized by Peers

byFallon Sheffield

A number of conservative students at the University of Texas at Austin say they feel marginalized for their political beliefs. In the era of growing intolerance, where labels such as “woke politics” and “culture wars” makes “political correctness” seem almost polite, conservative students on college campuses, including UT-Austin, also say they often find themselves branded […]

Protesters Rally in Austin Against U.S. Supreme Court Threat to Roe v. Wade

byZacharia E. Washington

Several hundred protesters marched from the Texas Capitol to the United States Federal Courthouse in Austin in protest.

4/20 Rally at Governor’s Mansion Calls for Marijuana Decriminalization

byKevin Malcolm Jr.

Marijuana advocates waved flags and smoked weed outside of the Texas Governor’s Mansion on 4/20, a day known as a holiday for celebrating marijuana, to call for further decriminalization of the drug.  “We can help, you know, liberate people who are in prison for nonviolent crime,” said Colin Kerrigan, a civil engineering student at the […]

Reporting Texas TV – April 28, 2022

byReporting Texas TV Staff

Journalism students from Moody College at the University of Texas produced their fifth newscast of the semester on April 28, 2022. This week’s reports include efforts to save several gay bars from demolition, the Texas Community Music Festival‘s return after a lengthy COVID hiatus, and an Earth Day clean up hosted by kayak companies.

Restoration of Slave Quarters Will Help Austin More Fully Tell Its History, Experts Say

byPamela Hall Vance

Restoration of the only slave quarters still intact in Austin can lead to an “expanded narrative” of the city’s past that aids in understanding and racial equity, historic preservation experts said Saturday at the Neill-Cochran House Museum. 

“We tell these stories, we preserve these sites, because if the sites aren’t there, you can easily say that never happened,” said Joe McGill, founder of the South Carolina-based Slave Dwelling Project. “It’s necessary for those slave dwellings to stay, because it tells the whole story. We want to know about all this.”

A 12-month restoration of the slave quarters behind the Neill-Cochran House at 2310 San Gabriel St. in the West Campus neighborhood is set to begin this month. The project, called “Reckoning with the Past: Telling the Untold Story of Race in Austin,” will include new interpretive programming for visitors and prompted Saturday’s panel discussion at the museum.

Texas Community Music Festival Returns After Two-Year Hiatus

byMadeline Salinas

AUSTIN, Texas — A few weeks prior to the 15th Texas Community Music Festival in 2020, organizers learned that they would have to cancel the annual event. “We kind of had to put the brakes on everything,” said festival organizer Kat Brotherton. “Nobody really had any idea, at that point, how long this break was going […]

Gay Bars Threatened By Downtown Development May Be Saved By Cultural-Historical Significance

bySamuel Stark

AUSTIN, Texas — Nestled among skyscrapers in Austin’s booming downtown area is The Iron Bear, a beloved gay bar on West Sixth Street. Bengie Beshear, a co-owner of the venue, describes it as welcoming to all types of gay men. “The Iron Bear is place that catches the people that don’t really fit in the […]