Students Demand Protection of Ethnic and Gender Studies as UT Weighs Trump Compact and Consolidation

By Samantha Rubin

Photography By Samantha Rubin

Reporting Texas

University of Texas students Monday urged administrators to reject the Trump compact on higher education and to stop a possible consolidation plan of the College of Liberal Arts they say could erase ethnic studies, women’s and gender studies and several language departments.

“When I arrived at UT as a freshman, our campus looked completely different,” said Mikey Rush, a senior economics and African and African diaspora studies student. “We had Black faculty members who served as mentors who have since left, spaces like the MEC (Multicultural Engagement Center) that grounded us, removed  and programs that the university at least pretended to be invested in. Year by year, I’ve watched these things disappear, not because students stopped needing them, but because of the institution over-complying with political pressure.”

The proposal from the Trump administration offers preferential access to federal funding, grants and benefits to universities that agree to adopt a set of policy changes. Those changes include limiting or banning considerations of race, sex, gender and identity in admissions and hiring. None of the other eight schools the Trump administration has contacted about the compact has agreed to it. UT has yet to sign or refuse the proposal, leaving faculty and students questioning what is going to happen next.

One of six speakers at Monday’s event near the UT Tower, Rush called the agreement “an erasure tactic dressed up as neutrality.”

“It tells us that we cannot belittle conservative ideas, or that academic freedom is an absolute, and that the university must accept political oversight of what can be taught,” Rush said. “But history isn’t political. The truth isn’t political. Academic integrity cannot survive if one ideology is protected.”

Several students speaking Monday said they fear that UT will consolidate Black studies, Mexican American and Latino studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies into broader academic units.

“These studies are each distinct programs that deserve their own academic inquiry through individual departments,” said Samaria Taylor, a senior government and African and African diaspora studies major.

Taylor noted that the university last spring removed graduation requirements that students complete courses designated with skills and experience flags for ​​writing, ethics, cultural diversity, global cultures, quantitative reasoning and independent inquiry.

“In order to fulfill these requirements, many students chose to take ethnic and women’s studies classes,” Taylor said. “Now that they’re gone, students are not required to step out of their comfort zone or expand their horizons and take these classes, therefore we have lower enrollment.”

Alexander Pineda, a junior Mexican American and Latina/o studies student, linked the possible consolidation to statewide political efforts, pointing to Texas Senate bill 17, which eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion offices, and Senate Bill 37, which reduced the role of faculty in governing Texas universities.

“This consolidation is not for the money, rather, the ideology,” Pineda said. “To that, I say, enough. Get your sticky hands off my education. I have a right to learn. Professors have a right to teach. Black and brown students have a right to know their history and teach it.”

Daniel Ramirez, a member of Austin Students for a Democratic Society, used his remarks to call for reinstating the Faculty Council and Graduate Assembly, which were dismantled under new state rules.

“Other Texas institutions, like the Texas State System and Texas A&M System, have taken measures to reinstate their faculty councils,” Ramirez said. “Our university has failed to. We feel that these councils were vital to holding our administration accountable to the wants and needs of the people who attend our institution.”

Ramirez said students need to be informed about the possible consolidation process and whether UT will sign the Trump compact.

“As students paying tuition, the backbone of this institution, and the future of the Longhorn brand, we have an obligation to be at the table where decisions are made that affect us all,” Ramirez said. “The silence has been intentional. We just want to know why we are being left in the dark.”