Interviewer: Awesome. Okay, so I'm here on April 19. With my Graduate Student, do you consent to this interview being recorded?
Grad Student: Yes.
Interviewer: Okay. And then do you consent to having the transcript of this interview posted online without any identifying material?
Grad Student: Yes.
Interviewer: Awesome. Okay. So my first question is, what organizations are you involved with on campus?
Grad Student: So I was involved with an academic graduate student organization for LGBT graduate students within our department. Previously, I've also been a graduate student assembly member and a graduate student organization representative for my department.
Interviewer: Okay, awesome. And was so it's through the department. So was that university funded and everything?
Grad Student: Yes.
Interviewer: Okay. Okay. So then what has changed about these organizations or your role within them since the implementation of SB-17?
Grad Student: So I'll start with personally, I've had to pull back and reconsider my involvement with student organizations on campus. I'm concerned about UT information being either released or subpoenaed by the legislature to "out" involvement in groups that may be considered, I guess, against SB-17's permits. Because of the politicized nature of some of these groups, I worry about it impacting not only my ability to continue working at UT, but my comfort working here at UT and being a student as well. I'm unwilling to be publicly identified as a group member and unwilling to re-involve myself in the Graduate Student Assembly; they seem unable to do anything about a lot of these concerns. It's just out of the scope of their powers, unwilling to return to the graduate student organization, because the school and department have been unwilling to hear legitimate and reasonable concerns from graduate students about these issues. On the group side, sorry, I have notes for you. I took some notes.
Interviewer: No, yeah. I'm just here to gather everything that you want to give me. So anything you want to say.
Grad Student: Yeah, of course. And I have, I think I'm gonna send you my notes after this as well. So on the group side, the funding structure for that graduate student group for LGBT students has changed. The Graduate Student Organization has also had to re-label its priorities to access any kind of funding from the department or school, because it was aimed at supporting sexual orientation and gender identity minority students, groups of which are specifically targeted by SB-17. And because some of the nature of the department giving funding, plus the fact that graduate students are also frequently employees of the university, it leaves graduate students in a weird and vulnerable position here. Because SB-17 is concerned with university and university employee behavior, and we are both employees and students. The last thing on the group end is that one of the goals of the Graduate Student Organization was not just to support existing graduate students, but to recruit and retain new members for the department. It currently feels unethical and potentially illegal to do recruitment in the context of that group. I don't feel particularly supported or secure in my position as a graduate student, or even in my capacity as an employee. How can I ethically, morally tell someone in a similar position: "Yes, you should come here, it would be a good fit for you." And again, because graduate students, many of us are in part, or for the entirety of our time at UT are also employed by the state. It leaves us in a really weird position, because SB-17 is about employee behavior. But we're also students.
Interviewer: Yeah, this is a perspective that I haven't actually heard yet, because most of my interactions have been with undergraduate students. So this is really interesting, and something that I really haven't heard a lot about, in general in regards to SB-17. So I think it's really important to give this weird position that you're in with being a student and an employee at the same time. Yeah, and I'm sure that my next question is, are there any new challenges that you encounter which is kind of like what you were talking about? What is there anything else that is directly a challenge with this kind of situation?
Grad Student: Yeah, it's been I mean, even just on the individual emotional level, it's been really difficult both in my capacity as an educator and as a student. I really firmly believe in the value of public education and the UT system specifically, has given me a lot of opportunities and support to continue my education. All of my higher education has been through the help of the UT System. And I really wish I could have even considered staying in Texas as an educator. But SB-17, has made that kind of an impossibility. Even though I wanted to kind of pay back my community through the service and the skills I have here learned, it just doesn't seem like Texas wants me here. I came to UT feeling accepted. In recent years, that feeling kind of dwindled to feeling tolerated. In the past year, as the legislature's ramped up on anti-DEI and anti-queer legislation, the university has not really said anything and the things that it has said have not been particularly supportive, particularly of staff and employees. I'm leaving UT feeling unwelcome, if not undesirable. It's hard not to be hearing, "Good riddance!" from the university system, and from Texas in general, even if I learned in their schools and taught their courses, just because of the fact that I belong to one of these groups that is being targeted by these bills. It makes me feel like I'm not welcome. In my notes here, I also have a link under this question. It's to a Texas Tribune article, Ken Paxton and the Texas AG, have been attempting to collect data about transgender people who change their name and sex; they were blocked by the courts. But this kind of effort makes me and people like me really nervous. You don't want to be on some government list, especially when it's easy to perceive a transgender person who teaches as somehow promoting transgender ideology just because they exist. So you know, not a lot of job security or feeling supported on the side of student education either.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. That is, like an incredibly hard position to be put in, I can't imagine. So, moving on to the actual bill itself. I think I worded this question badly. But kind of like, when the bill was announced when it was released, if you've read it, if you haven't read it, how did you understand what it would cover on campus? And was it easy to understand, things like that? Yeah.
Grad Student: So, my initial understanding back when SB-17, was announced that, essentially universities would be having to close any diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that were centered solely on promoting either in recruitment or retention, diverse students based on race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. As the bill has kind of developed, it's become clear that if not the original intention, the implementation is broader than we anticipated. We've seen a lot of UT System schools say, "Well, we're just going to relabel these departments or change names." And we've seen firings, we've seen administrators be put on leave. Here at UT Austin, specifically, we've seen a bunch of staff get let go even after they were reassigned as non-DEI staff. So it's not clear from the implementation what exactly it's supposed to cover and the text is even less clear. You know, I have a degree in constitutional law interpretation, and it is not clear what this is supposed to mean or cover. It's very ambiguous. But one thing it does make clear, so I have Clause 4, Section 4A, has this policy does not prohibit programs and activities designed in reference to sex, as opposed to gender identity or sexual orientation. So it's clear that SB-17 is differentiating between, I mean, I think that they would argue cisgender men and women and trans and non binary men, women, and people in general. So even through the ambiguity, it's kind of clear what, what kind of themes and topics they're choosing to cut from support.
Interviewer: And I think that's really interesting, kind of pulling into the next question that I have here, that the women's community center, which was under the new division of campus and community engagement is included in the closure. So the closure of the dccee, which was the formerly the DDC II was a major recent decision. So what does this kind of mean for our community on campus? And why do you think that the division was included in the university's compliance?
Grad Student: So, the short answer is I think that this was a political decision. President Hartzell has a very close relationship to many members of the legislature and a lot of large contributors to UT's endowment, many of whom are involved pretty closely in Texas state and national politics. This is not out of line with Hartzell's prior behavior, for example, I think they've renamed the Liberty Institute, I think it's the Civitas Institute. But Hartsell was key not only in founding that, but putting the director in place. For example, they gave the search committee a shortlist and only one of the people on the shortlist had a PhD, which meant only one of the people that we were allowed to interview could really head an academic department of that size at an institution like this. So Hartzell has been shifting politics at UT, specifically about diversity and inclusion for a number of years. DCCE was responsible for a lot of programs that promote student engagement and campus life regardless of background, it was perceived as diverse because UT is itself diverse. That's probably going to change somewhat now that we closed DCCE.
Interviewer: So, before any of the changes were implemented on campus, how did you feel about the efforts to foster inclusivity?
Grad Student: UT Austin was okay. It wasn't great. It wasn't the best. You know, there's a reason that UT Dallas has been the number one LGBT friendly school in Texas over UT Austin since I think 2017. We're not even in the top five. I'd like so I'll share with you. When I was in high school, I went to Germany. I had more culture shock coming from UT Dallas to UT Austin than I did going from the US to Germany. UT is, you know, it's in Austin. But it's still Texas. And because we're so close to the legislature, so much of our behavior gets scrutinized. I know that in 2019, they were attempting to institute the counseling centers, Voices against the Violence program, was trying to introduce a healthy masculinities program to support men on campus, in engaging in mental health and like community behavior. The legislature caught wind of this and shut it down and said "UT thinks men are toxic!" And it's been really hard to have a university environment that's so close to the legislature when the legislature won't just let just the university do its job. Yeah, so it's it's, we were all right. We weren't great, but it's definitely gone downhill. Yeah, that LGBT rating index issued a red alert warning for schools in Texas, too, overall.
Interviewer: Since the since the bill was implemented?
Grad Student: Yeah, I mean, there's been a number of ones, but SB-17 didn't help.
Interviewer: So kind of, I guess, maybe not in line with what you just said, but were any of the UT sponsored DEI resources a part of your decision to come to UT?
Grad Student: Yeah, I mean, honestly. So that's part of why it was such a big shock, because I did think that UT was going to have that kind of environment, the Gender and Sexuality Center and the LGBT certificate and studies degree program, alongside all of these graduate student organizations for minority students were reasons that I thought UT was going to have more of this community that was supportive, inclusive and inviting of diverse perspectives.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Um, I guess the little addendum to that is Did it have any kind of impact on your student experience, which you have gone into a little. Is there anything else that you want to mention about kind of like how these resources impacted your experience while you were here?
Grad Student: Yeah. So graduate school, very difficult overall, and particularly after COVID hit, very lonely experience for a lot of graduate students. I know a lot of people in my cohort, particularly women, dropped out. Um, as far as I know, I'm the only trans person in my entire department. I'm one of a handful of LGBT students, there's probably no more than 10 in the formal group, maybe five or six more in the department who don't want to be involved or whatever. When I got admitted to my Ph.D. program, I got outed. So they sent my legal name and my legal sex to everyone in the department, as part of like, "Here's the new students who are visiting!" Because they just didn't think that, "Wait, maybe we shouldn't give everyone a name that he doesn't use them tell everyone what his legal sex is." And understandably, it made me really nervous because I didn't know who had actually read the handout or who hadn't. I didn't get to choose how I came out to my department. But with the support of programs from DCCE, like the Title IX Office, the Gender and Sexuality Center, all of these resource groups for students and the faculty at these centers provided support and backup of, "Oh, yeah, that wasn't okay. You should you should talk to someone about that. When you do talk to someone about that, we're going to do something! And we're not going to make it clear that you are the person who complained about it." Without that kind of support, it's quite possible I would have been another drop out in my program. And, you know, my year is getting increasingly white and cis male.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. So, the next question is kind of two questions. I've had some interesting responses to this. In your own opinion, why do you think SB-17 was enacted?
Grad Student: I think it's part of- the big answer is culture war politics. That in some ways, there is a belief, or I would characterize it as a misunderstanding, that DEI programs unfairly benefit women, people of color, and LGBT people. When really, these programs are to support these students through college, and they're not exclusive to to students who are minorities. Many of these programs support students who are outside of their target demographic. These programs help students graduate and engage fully in the college process, because we know that colleges weren't originally intended to serve these students. They used to be pretty much exclusively for white wealthy men. And now we have a lot of people who aren't wealthy white men, so we need to engage in programs that promote graduation by all people. On the merit side of this, I think that's a harder question, but I don't think it's addressed by getting rid of DEI concerns. So merit, you know, start off on the dictionary to deserve something, but that requires measuring who deserves something. And I think SB-17 treats DEI as if it were somehow not considering merit instead of trying to make the process more holistic. We know standardized tests are biased towards white wealthy test takers, that's data that we have consistently. But if that's our standard, it certainly isn't race blind, which is one of the goals of SB-17. So eliminating more and more race-based... it just doesn't further that goal. If it's grades in school, where you were born determines a lot of what schools you go to what they teach what opportunities and support you have access to. We also know that school scores are biased towards white and wealthy students. Beyond that, UT admits the top 6% of any Texas class. So if we know not all high schools are equal that some students are just not going to be as good even if they were in the top six. That pretty much directly in opposition to claims that we should be focusing on merit, right? It just doesn't furthers the goals in a realistic way.
Interviewer: Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm blanking right now. I added that merit aspect in there, I'm sure you know, because that is the reasoning that Senator Creighton gives, for writing SB-17. I don't know if he was the main author, but he seems to be the main voice on it. So yeah, that's the reason I included that in there. So the next question is, what does Diversity Equity and Inclusion mean to you? And do you think that it's important?
Grad Student: My complicated, like philosophical answer here is DEI means: An equitable chance at success, facilitated through inclusion on the premise of diversity as a strength. If we want everyone to have a shot at success, we need to make sure everyone has a reasonable shot at being included at every stage of the process, from test scores and admissions to class requirements to facilitating graduation. UT is a public university. Our job is to serve the public, with the largest public endowment in the country! It's shameful that we're poking holes in life rafts for students and blaming them for drowning. We're not wasting money here. If we were to look at how are these facilities and these departments contribute to graduation rates? My firm belief is we would see a positive correlation. It's not like we're hurting for funds, we spend a ton of money on a lot of things that aren't merit based, arguably, at the end of the day, UT's job as a public university is to help its public, Texas students, graduate. And if we're not strapped for cash, I feel like we have an obligation to invest in programs that produce outcomes that are best for our students, not just what we think students deserve. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. Thank you. Um, so the last question that I have here is, it's kind of the crux of my project is, I think that this is important in UT's line of history with integration and inclusion. So do you think that this event is important in UT's history as a university?
Grad Student: Unequivocally. I have a little rant here. In 1950 SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the US ordered that UT Law, against the wishes of the university president Theophilus Painter, admit Herman Marion Sweatt, a black man, instead of building an entirely new Texas law school for non-white men. It took Sweatt four years of litigation to win the case, and during that time, he consistently received death threats and harassment. When he was finally admitted he was only allowed to learn in the hallway, or physically partitioned off from white students. He dropped out due to stress and resulting health complications. Today on campus, we have both a Sweatt and a Painter Hall, which I think is a little messed up. I think the reason that I bring this up is I feel it's a reflection of SB-17's impact today. University presidents have immense power over the shape and direction of the school they serve. And it's their job to make sure all Texans have equitable access to outcomes. I think Hartzell chose like Painter did, and we are worse off for it. Choosing not to provide necessary support for your students only drives the ones who need that support out, instead of benefiting students who didn't need the support already, feeling like it's more fair.
Interviewer: Yeah, thank you very much. That was all the questions that I have prepared. Is there anything else that you wanted to comment on or anything? Anything at all really?
Grad Student: No, just seems like you're doing a really good job. And I can already tell you've learned about survey and interview research just from doing this.
Interviewer: Awesome. Thank you very much. I'll go ahead and stop the recording if there's anything else okay.
Grad Student: Yes.
Interviewer: Okay. And then do you consent to having the transcript of this interview posted online without any identifying material?
Grad Student: Yes.
Interviewer: Awesome. Okay. So my first question is, what organizations are you involved with on campus?
Grad Student: So I was involved with an academic graduate student organization for LGBT graduate students within our department. Previously, I've also been a graduate student assembly member and a graduate student organization representative for my department.
Interviewer: Okay, awesome. And was so it's through the department. So was that university funded and everything?
Grad Student: Yes.
Interviewer: Okay. Okay. So then what has changed about these organizations or your role within them since the implementation of SB-17?
Grad Student: So I'll start with personally, I've had to pull back and reconsider my involvement with student organizations on campus. I'm concerned about UT information being either released or subpoenaed by the legislature to "out" involvement in groups that may be considered, I guess, against SB-17's permits. Because of the politicized nature of some of these groups, I worry about it impacting not only my ability to continue working at UT, but my comfort working here at UT and being a student as well. I'm unwilling to be publicly identified as a group member and unwilling to re-involve myself in the Graduate Student Assembly; they seem unable to do anything about a lot of these concerns. It's just out of the scope of their powers, unwilling to return to the graduate student organization, because the school and department have been unwilling to hear legitimate and reasonable concerns from graduate students about these issues. On the group side, sorry, I have notes for you. I took some notes.
Interviewer: No, yeah. I'm just here to gather everything that you want to give me. So anything you want to say.
Grad Student: Yeah, of course. And I have, I think I'm gonna send you my notes after this as well. So on the group side, the funding structure for that graduate student group for LGBT students has changed. The Graduate Student Organization has also had to re-label its priorities to access any kind of funding from the department or school, because it was aimed at supporting sexual orientation and gender identity minority students, groups of which are specifically targeted by SB-17. And because some of the nature of the department giving funding, plus the fact that graduate students are also frequently employees of the university, it leaves graduate students in a weird and vulnerable position here. Because SB-17 is concerned with university and university employee behavior, and we are both employees and students. The last thing on the group end is that one of the goals of the Graduate Student Organization was not just to support existing graduate students, but to recruit and retain new members for the department. It currently feels unethical and potentially illegal to do recruitment in the context of that group. I don't feel particularly supported or secure in my position as a graduate student, or even in my capacity as an employee. How can I ethically, morally tell someone in a similar position: "Yes, you should come here, it would be a good fit for you." And again, because graduate students, many of us are in part, or for the entirety of our time at UT are also employed by the state. It leaves us in a really weird position, because SB-17 is about employee behavior. But we're also students.
Interviewer: Yeah, this is a perspective that I haven't actually heard yet, because most of my interactions have been with undergraduate students. So this is really interesting, and something that I really haven't heard a lot about, in general in regards to SB-17. So I think it's really important to give this weird position that you're in with being a student and an employee at the same time. Yeah, and I'm sure that my next question is, are there any new challenges that you encounter which is kind of like what you were talking about? What is there anything else that is directly a challenge with this kind of situation?
Grad Student: Yeah, it's been I mean, even just on the individual emotional level, it's been really difficult both in my capacity as an educator and as a student. I really firmly believe in the value of public education and the UT system specifically, has given me a lot of opportunities and support to continue my education. All of my higher education has been through the help of the UT System. And I really wish I could have even considered staying in Texas as an educator. But SB-17, has made that kind of an impossibility. Even though I wanted to kind of pay back my community through the service and the skills I have here learned, it just doesn't seem like Texas wants me here. I came to UT feeling accepted. In recent years, that feeling kind of dwindled to feeling tolerated. In the past year, as the legislature's ramped up on anti-DEI and anti-queer legislation, the university has not really said anything and the things that it has said have not been particularly supportive, particularly of staff and employees. I'm leaving UT feeling unwelcome, if not undesirable. It's hard not to be hearing, "Good riddance!" from the university system, and from Texas in general, even if I learned in their schools and taught their courses, just because of the fact that I belong to one of these groups that is being targeted by these bills. It makes me feel like I'm not welcome. In my notes here, I also have a link under this question. It's to a Texas Tribune article, Ken Paxton and the Texas AG, have been attempting to collect data about transgender people who change their name and sex; they were blocked by the courts. But this kind of effort makes me and people like me really nervous. You don't want to be on some government list, especially when it's easy to perceive a transgender person who teaches as somehow promoting transgender ideology just because they exist. So you know, not a lot of job security or feeling supported on the side of student education either.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. That is, like an incredibly hard position to be put in, I can't imagine. So, moving on to the actual bill itself. I think I worded this question badly. But kind of like, when the bill was announced when it was released, if you've read it, if you haven't read it, how did you understand what it would cover on campus? And was it easy to understand, things like that? Yeah.
Grad Student: So, my initial understanding back when SB-17, was announced that, essentially universities would be having to close any diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that were centered solely on promoting either in recruitment or retention, diverse students based on race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. As the bill has kind of developed, it's become clear that if not the original intention, the implementation is broader than we anticipated. We've seen a lot of UT System schools say, "Well, we're just going to relabel these departments or change names." And we've seen firings, we've seen administrators be put on leave. Here at UT Austin, specifically, we've seen a bunch of staff get let go even after they were reassigned as non-DEI staff. So it's not clear from the implementation what exactly it's supposed to cover and the text is even less clear. You know, I have a degree in constitutional law interpretation, and it is not clear what this is supposed to mean or cover. It's very ambiguous. But one thing it does make clear, so I have Clause 4, Section 4A, has this policy does not prohibit programs and activities designed in reference to sex, as opposed to gender identity or sexual orientation. So it's clear that SB-17 is differentiating between, I mean, I think that they would argue cisgender men and women and trans and non binary men, women, and people in general. So even through the ambiguity, it's kind of clear what, what kind of themes and topics they're choosing to cut from support.
Interviewer: And I think that's really interesting, kind of pulling into the next question that I have here, that the women's community center, which was under the new division of campus and community engagement is included in the closure. So the closure of the dccee, which was the formerly the DDC II was a major recent decision. So what does this kind of mean for our community on campus? And why do you think that the division was included in the university's compliance?
Grad Student: So, the short answer is I think that this was a political decision. President Hartzell has a very close relationship to many members of the legislature and a lot of large contributors to UT's endowment, many of whom are involved pretty closely in Texas state and national politics. This is not out of line with Hartzell's prior behavior, for example, I think they've renamed the Liberty Institute, I think it's the Civitas Institute. But Hartsell was key not only in founding that, but putting the director in place. For example, they gave the search committee a shortlist and only one of the people on the shortlist had a PhD, which meant only one of the people that we were allowed to interview could really head an academic department of that size at an institution like this. So Hartzell has been shifting politics at UT, specifically about diversity and inclusion for a number of years. DCCE was responsible for a lot of programs that promote student engagement and campus life regardless of background, it was perceived as diverse because UT is itself diverse. That's probably going to change somewhat now that we closed DCCE.
Interviewer: So, before any of the changes were implemented on campus, how did you feel about the efforts to foster inclusivity?
Grad Student: UT Austin was okay. It wasn't great. It wasn't the best. You know, there's a reason that UT Dallas has been the number one LGBT friendly school in Texas over UT Austin since I think 2017. We're not even in the top five. I'd like so I'll share with you. When I was in high school, I went to Germany. I had more culture shock coming from UT Dallas to UT Austin than I did going from the US to Germany. UT is, you know, it's in Austin. But it's still Texas. And because we're so close to the legislature, so much of our behavior gets scrutinized. I know that in 2019, they were attempting to institute the counseling centers, Voices against the Violence program, was trying to introduce a healthy masculinities program to support men on campus, in engaging in mental health and like community behavior. The legislature caught wind of this and shut it down and said "UT thinks men are toxic!" And it's been really hard to have a university environment that's so close to the legislature when the legislature won't just let just the university do its job. Yeah, so it's it's, we were all right. We weren't great, but it's definitely gone downhill. Yeah, that LGBT rating index issued a red alert warning for schools in Texas, too, overall.
Interviewer: Since the since the bill was implemented?
Grad Student: Yeah, I mean, there's been a number of ones, but SB-17 didn't help.
Interviewer: So kind of, I guess, maybe not in line with what you just said, but were any of the UT sponsored DEI resources a part of your decision to come to UT?
Grad Student: Yeah, I mean, honestly. So that's part of why it was such a big shock, because I did think that UT was going to have that kind of environment, the Gender and Sexuality Center and the LGBT certificate and studies degree program, alongside all of these graduate student organizations for minority students were reasons that I thought UT was going to have more of this community that was supportive, inclusive and inviting of diverse perspectives.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Um, I guess the little addendum to that is Did it have any kind of impact on your student experience, which you have gone into a little. Is there anything else that you want to mention about kind of like how these resources impacted your experience while you were here?
Grad Student: Yeah. So graduate school, very difficult overall, and particularly after COVID hit, very lonely experience for a lot of graduate students. I know a lot of people in my cohort, particularly women, dropped out. Um, as far as I know, I'm the only trans person in my entire department. I'm one of a handful of LGBT students, there's probably no more than 10 in the formal group, maybe five or six more in the department who don't want to be involved or whatever. When I got admitted to my Ph.D. program, I got outed. So they sent my legal name and my legal sex to everyone in the department, as part of like, "Here's the new students who are visiting!" Because they just didn't think that, "Wait, maybe we shouldn't give everyone a name that he doesn't use them tell everyone what his legal sex is." And understandably, it made me really nervous because I didn't know who had actually read the handout or who hadn't. I didn't get to choose how I came out to my department. But with the support of programs from DCCE, like the Title IX Office, the Gender and Sexuality Center, all of these resource groups for students and the faculty at these centers provided support and backup of, "Oh, yeah, that wasn't okay. You should you should talk to someone about that. When you do talk to someone about that, we're going to do something! And we're not going to make it clear that you are the person who complained about it." Without that kind of support, it's quite possible I would have been another drop out in my program. And, you know, my year is getting increasingly white and cis male.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. So, the next question is kind of two questions. I've had some interesting responses to this. In your own opinion, why do you think SB-17 was enacted?
Grad Student: I think it's part of- the big answer is culture war politics. That in some ways, there is a belief, or I would characterize it as a misunderstanding, that DEI programs unfairly benefit women, people of color, and LGBT people. When really, these programs are to support these students through college, and they're not exclusive to to students who are minorities. Many of these programs support students who are outside of their target demographic. These programs help students graduate and engage fully in the college process, because we know that colleges weren't originally intended to serve these students. They used to be pretty much exclusively for white wealthy men. And now we have a lot of people who aren't wealthy white men, so we need to engage in programs that promote graduation by all people. On the merit side of this, I think that's a harder question, but I don't think it's addressed by getting rid of DEI concerns. So merit, you know, start off on the dictionary to deserve something, but that requires measuring who deserves something. And I think SB-17 treats DEI as if it were somehow not considering merit instead of trying to make the process more holistic. We know standardized tests are biased towards white wealthy test takers, that's data that we have consistently. But if that's our standard, it certainly isn't race blind, which is one of the goals of SB-17. So eliminating more and more race-based... it just doesn't further that goal. If it's grades in school, where you were born determines a lot of what schools you go to what they teach what opportunities and support you have access to. We also know that school scores are biased towards white and wealthy students. Beyond that, UT admits the top 6% of any Texas class. So if we know not all high schools are equal that some students are just not going to be as good even if they were in the top six. That pretty much directly in opposition to claims that we should be focusing on merit, right? It just doesn't furthers the goals in a realistic way.
Interviewer: Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm blanking right now. I added that merit aspect in there, I'm sure you know, because that is the reasoning that Senator Creighton gives, for writing SB-17. I don't know if he was the main author, but he seems to be the main voice on it. So yeah, that's the reason I included that in there. So the next question is, what does Diversity Equity and Inclusion mean to you? And do you think that it's important?
Grad Student: My complicated, like philosophical answer here is DEI means: An equitable chance at success, facilitated through inclusion on the premise of diversity as a strength. If we want everyone to have a shot at success, we need to make sure everyone has a reasonable shot at being included at every stage of the process, from test scores and admissions to class requirements to facilitating graduation. UT is a public university. Our job is to serve the public, with the largest public endowment in the country! It's shameful that we're poking holes in life rafts for students and blaming them for drowning. We're not wasting money here. If we were to look at how are these facilities and these departments contribute to graduation rates? My firm belief is we would see a positive correlation. It's not like we're hurting for funds, we spend a ton of money on a lot of things that aren't merit based, arguably, at the end of the day, UT's job as a public university is to help its public, Texas students, graduate. And if we're not strapped for cash, I feel like we have an obligation to invest in programs that produce outcomes that are best for our students, not just what we think students deserve. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. Thank you. Um, so the last question that I have here is, it's kind of the crux of my project is, I think that this is important in UT's line of history with integration and inclusion. So do you think that this event is important in UT's history as a university?
Grad Student: Unequivocally. I have a little rant here. In 1950 SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the US ordered that UT Law, against the wishes of the university president Theophilus Painter, admit Herman Marion Sweatt, a black man, instead of building an entirely new Texas law school for non-white men. It took Sweatt four years of litigation to win the case, and during that time, he consistently received death threats and harassment. When he was finally admitted he was only allowed to learn in the hallway, or physically partitioned off from white students. He dropped out due to stress and resulting health complications. Today on campus, we have both a Sweatt and a Painter Hall, which I think is a little messed up. I think the reason that I bring this up is I feel it's a reflection of SB-17's impact today. University presidents have immense power over the shape and direction of the school they serve. And it's their job to make sure all Texans have equitable access to outcomes. I think Hartzell chose like Painter did, and we are worse off for it. Choosing not to provide necessary support for your students only drives the ones who need that support out, instead of benefiting students who didn't need the support already, feeling like it's more fair.
Interviewer: Yeah, thank you very much. That was all the questions that I have prepared. Is there anything else that you wanted to comment on or anything? Anything at all really?
Grad Student: No, just seems like you're doing a really good job. And I can already tell you've learned about survey and interview research just from doing this.
Interviewer: Awesome. Thank you very much. I'll go ahead and stop the recording if there's anything else okay.