Students, faculty reflect on DEI ban after a semester of enforcements

July 15, 2024. Written and designed by Angelica Ruzanova

When Thaily Rangel received a text message from her coworker about her job being dissolved, she thought it was a late April Fools joke.

“I had a hard time processing it because I didn’t get reached out by any of my bosses or the school officially,” Rangel said, referring to the April 2 message.  

Rangel, an accounting junior at the University of Texas at Austin, had worked for a year on the Living the Longhorn Life team, an event planning program with the Office of the Dean of Students. 

Rangel’s position was eliminated alongside the Division of Campus and Community Engagement, formerly known as the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, under Senate Bill 17 which banned diversity, equity and inclusion practices in public universities.

Six months since enforcement of the laws began, student and professional employees at UT shared their experience adjusting to the new rules.

When university President Jay Hartzell announced the dissolution of DCCE April 2 in a mass email, it was the first time Rangel officially received news about her termination, she said. 

“My bosses were completely unaware of what was going on,” Rangel said. “I didn’t get an actual confirmation until days later.”

The sudden firings months after the rules went into effect on Jan. 1 followed a warning from Sen. Brandon Creighton, an author of SB 17, who advised against “merely renaming” positions and offices in a public statement. The consequences of noncompliance included potential “freezing of university funding,” Creighton said.

The position of Celeste González de Bustamante, a professor and former associate dean for global initiatives at the Moody College of Communication, was renamed and eventually terminated in May to comply with the law. 

“I was developing a (mentoring) program for international students,” Bustamante said. “That's no longer happening.”

Bustamante held the position of associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion before the change, and estimated nine other associate dean positions were eliminated alongside hers. She is still a professor at the UT School of Journalism and Media, and said that the vacancy of an associate dean for DEI means a lack of point person for related matters in the college.

“It's beyond the adjustment of language,” Bustamante said. “It's dismantling the structures that were in place to support students, all students really, and especially students who come from underrepresented and under-resourced groups.”

Currently, she is working on creating a center for global change in media that is launching in the fall. 

Students protesting SB 17 legislation gathered for a sit-in at the Capitol in March 2024. Ricardo B. Brazziel/Austin American-Statesman.

Another student worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared losing their current position, said that their job after being laid-off consisted of “gutting” their old office. The student said that they took the job to financially support themself.

“If it would have happened in May, my phone would have been off and I would have been out of food,” they said, referring to their difficulty paying for bills at the time.

Approximately 60 professional staff members were laid off, 40 of whom were affiliated with the DCCE, according to a joint press release from the Texas American Association of University Professors and the Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The press release did not specify whether that number reflects student employees.

​​The layoffs could be potential cases of retaliation and discrimination for employees who were not working in DEI-related jobs when they received termination notices, Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe said.

“Individuals have been terminated from the university, even though they were no longer working in those positions,” Bledsoe said. “So it seems pretty clear that they're being penalized for having worked in those positions in the past.”

President of the Texas NAACP Gary Bledsoe in February 2023 addressing professional sports organizations and state leaders on maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Ali Linan/CNHI News.

As part of its closure in April, programs housed in the DCCE were discontinued or redistributed, with the funding redeployed to support teaching and research, according to Hartzell's email. 

Fast forward to May, Creighton reinforced compliance measures during the first interim hearing for the Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education, according to a Senate press release. 

“The rise of DEI and the actions of outside agitators are both examples of small groups of individuals who believe they can control Texas higher education and force institutions to bend to their demands,” Creighton said in the press statement. “But we will not tolerate this in Texas.”

Some sponsored student organizations, such as the Environmental Justice Collective, took a different approach in adjusting to the policies. 

Members of the collective were given a two-week warning to comply with the bill over winter break as they noticed legal meetings on their managers’ schedules, Gandavadi, co-leader of the group, said.   

“We think that was a pretty calculated decision on the part of the university to put out detailed guidance after students were sent home,” Gandavadi said. “To prevent people from, you know, making noise about it.”

Environmental science senior Anya Gandavadi representing the Environmental Justice Collective previously housed under the Campus Environmental Center. Courtesy of the CEC website.

Three months later, the collective decided to separate from the Campus Environmental Center due to the restricted ability to discuss social justice under the bill. Registering as a student organization allowed the group to continue their work related to inequality in environmentalism, Gandavi said.

“Students should still know their rights, like the fact that academics (and research) is exempt from SB 17,” the co-lead said, adding that the group is supported by a coalition of professors and staff in the Department of Geography.

The group kept a strict documentation process as they considered the funding, mentorship and community that school sponsorship would have provided. However, the Gandavi said that becoming an independent student organization was liberating.

“We wanted our members to be able to speak and share their opinions freely,” Gandavadi said.