Letter from UT students requests transparency on anti-DEI moves
Concerns raised over firing of employees
Students from multiple University of Texas groups sent a letter to UT President Jay Hartzell, UT Vice President for Legal Affairs Amanda Cochran and state Sen. Brandon Creighton inviting them to address concerns after the university laid off more than 60 employees in former DEI-related positions and closed its Division of Campus and Community Affairs on April 2.
“On behalf of concerned students and constituents of Texas, we ask for University and State leaders to directly address the communities they claim to serve,” the students wrote.
Creighton, R-Conroe, authored Senate Bill 17, a law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion offices and related functions at public universities and colleges in Texas. He sent a letter March 26 to university chancellors warning them to fully comply with SB 17 ahead of Senate hearings planned for May, writing that just renaming offices would be “unacceptable.”
In the letter, sent last week, students call the terminations announced this month a “betrayal” that went against Hartzell’s Dec. 1 email to the UT campus
in which he said UT would involve and “effectively support” its community through its compliance with SB 17.
“This is your opportunity to uphold the promises you made to the UT Austin community,” the students wrote in the letter.
More than 300 UT community members have signed the letter, as has Texas Students for DEI, five former Multicultural Engagement Center student agencies, the new Not Our Texas Coalition and this year’s student executive board.
Students proposed a student-led town hall April 19 at the Hogg Memorial Auditorium for the leaders and students to gather to discuss SB 17 and the university’s changes.
Friday was the deadline given to the three leaders to respond. As of Friday afternoon, students said they had not heard back.
Creighton’s office did not respond to an American-Statesman requests for comment, and the university declined to comment.
Christian Mira, a UT senior who is the financial director of the QTBIPOCA, a former Multicultural Engagement Center student agency, and the chief of staff for UT Student Government, said students sent the letter to challenge the leaders to answer student questions transparently.
“It’s definitely intended to be productive, to not be as much of a frenzy as they might be afraid,” Mira said.
The quick unity formed among students to write this letter and to organize actions — such as protesting the university’s response to SB 17 during the university’s eclipse viewing event Monday spearheaded by the Not Our Texas coalition — stems from students’ belief that the university has taken compliance with the new law too far, students told the Statesman.
“It’s like we got to the finish line but then they just pushed it back farther,” said Amanda Garcia, a senior and organizer with TX Students for DEI.
Garcia wants the university to “finally acknowledge the harm” caused by SB 17. She said the town hall would be the first step in that conversation.
“There’s so much more that comes after this,” Garcia said.
What students also want is a say in what happens moving forward. The students demanded in the letter that the 2023-24 student government executive alliance, which represents the student body, be invited to testify with chancellors and regents at the Senate Education Committee hearings next month.
They also want to support student agencies who have lost their school sponsorship, such as through promoting GoFundMe fundraisers, and supporting staff members who lost their jobs.
“I’ve never seen students come together as urgently and as passionately as I have in the past week,” Mira said.
Izabella De La Garza, a 2023 alum of UT and an organizer of Texas Students for DEI, said the organization is supporting student advocacy and showing staff that they’re “still there for them the way they were for us.”
De La Garza hopes the three leaders respond to the students’ invitation to recognize the effect their decisions are having on universities.
“The influence that they have and the blame or the fault they have in all of this is also really important,” De La Garza said. “It’s important that we hold them accountable, that they are (at the town hall) so their constituents can tell them to their faces how disappointed they are and what they expect from them.”