Students Sit In to Demand Meeting with Provost over Trump Compact
By Natalia Rodriguez
Reporting Texas
Twelve representatives of Students for a Democratic Society staged a sit-in Friday as part of a protest at the University of Texas Tower to demand the school reject a “compact” offered by the Trump administration.
Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education would require schools that sign it to follow strict definitions of gender and ban any actions that might “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” In exchange, participating universities would receive preferential treatment for federal funding. The administration offered the compact to nine schools; UT is one of two that have not rejected the agreement, spurring a series of student-led protests the past month.
The protesters planned to deliver their demands, which included holding a public meeting regarding the state of the compact, to the office of the UT Provost William Inboden. They planned to stay in the provost’s office until they were able to deliver the list to Inboden personally. The sit-in resulted in threats of arrest from university officials.
“Once we got to the office, we were told by the provost’s assistant that he was busy and she did not tell us how soon we could meet with him,” said Maddie Zajicek, an SDS member and sit-in participant.
After they sat in the provost assistant’s office for around five minutes, Zajicek said, “She called the cops on us. We were not being violent. We were just sitting.”
Office assistants offered to set up a meeting at a later date, but the protesters turned down the offer and refused to leave.
“We let the assistant know that we have tried to contact the provost and tried to sign up for a meeting several times, and several weeks beforehand,” Zajicek said. “ We never got an answer, so we were not inclined to do that.”
The protesters agreed to leave after reaching a deal with administrators allowing two members to stay behind outside of the provost’s office. Those two were told they would set up a meeting with the provost.
“We just talked to senior officials and we are not able to schedule a meeting at this time,” Kelly Soucy, UT’s Title IX deputy for students, told the remaining protesters. “If you’re wanting to continue to express your activity, you need to be out of the Main Building.”
The pair of protesters, who requested anonymity, argued that the office staff had not held up their part of the agreement.
“From our perspective, it feels like you just lied to us,” one protester said. “You said you would promise to get this happening. You couldn’t promise 100 percent the date, but you said you’d get it in the books, and you haven’t tried.”
After repeated requests to leave the UT Tower, the pair returned to the main protest outside after expressing their frustration to Soucy about what they called a lack of transparency to them and the UT student body.
“I’m not surprised, but I wish they actually cared about the students,” Zajicek said. “They claim to be for the students, but they won’t even hear us.”
Despite their disappointment with the outcome of their protest, SDS members said they are committed to holding UT’s administration accountable.
“We wanted to be able to show the demands to their face so they can’t just put it away somewhere,” Zajicek said. “We will keep fighting the compact and we will keep pressuring administration to listen to student voices.”
Inboden recently told the Chronicle of Higher Education that UT officials were having “constructive behind-the-scenes discussions with the White House” about the compact.
“As written, some of the procedural enforcements of the compact would clash with state law and some of our other institutional prerogatives,” Inboden told the publication. “But in the main, we’re happy to be having those discussions with them.”
The university this week published a separate statement on academic integrity.