Disillusionment, disenfranchisement and despondence are all words one could easily use to describe the current mood at UT Dallas.
With the November election quickly approaching, students are not particularly enthusiastic about their choices for the Oval Office; many student activists are more focused on local and state elections because of the immediate and tangible impact they have on the university and North Texas community as a whole.
Two main political trends stand out at UTD: the first is student concerns regarding the ongoing war in Palestine and university investments in weapons manufacturers facilitating this conflict; the second is student involvement in local and state politics as a result of the issues they encounter on a daly basis.
The Background
UTD may have once been a relatively quiet campus, but the past two years have been astoundingly hectic for its students.In spring 2023, the UTD divestment campaign successfully passed a resolution in the UTD Student Government that called for University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO) and thus the university to divest itself from five weapon manufacturers. UTD President Richard Benson publicly distanced himself from the students in a letter he sent to the Texas Jewish Post.
That spring, Texas legislators also approved Senate Bill 17, which prohibited state-funded universities from maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and banned the programs, activities and trainings those offices had offered.
Fall 2023 saw more frequent protests organized by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and a back-and-forth spray paint struggle over the political messaging displayed on the campus Spirit Rocks, a public forum for student expression that had been used to display political messages as early as 2009. The Spirit Rocks were abruptly removed in November 2023 as students went home for fall break, a move that sparked weeks of protest. That fall marked the end of the UTD Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion. The short-lived Office of Campus Resources and Support replaced it for most of the spring semester before it, too, was dissolved.
On May 1, 2024, UTD’s first-ever student encampment and first-ever state trooper raid took place. The arrest of 21 students, faculty, alumni and community members has continued to have a profound effect on campus as the university pursued both legal and academic charges against those arrested.
Fall 2024 has included the end of The Mercury, UT Dallas’ student newspaper, which has operated since 1980, and new prohibitions on student expression as seen with the banning of chalking on campus.
Why So Many Protests?
Students don’t like war. Throughout the '60s and '70s, college campuses in the U.S. were scenes of large anti-war protests in response to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In the '80s it was major student-led anti-apartheid protests in response to government policies in South Africa. The current wave of protests at UTD aims to persuade the university to divest itself of investments in weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.On April 26, 2024, UTD Students for Justice in Palestine published its statement to Benson in which it said “the demands we have are unequivocal, and we lay them out clearly again: divest from death and destruction, protect Palestinian voices and advocacy, and condemn the genocidal assault on the Palestinian people by calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”
Hundreds of students have walked out of classes and joined peaceful protests, sit-ins and encampments on campus. And it is these demonstrations that campus administrators have elected to meet with state force.
Political science junior Eric Sell said, “I think it is unacceptable that [Kamala] Harris is unable to even insinuate that Israel should be held accountable in any way for the amount of disproportionate civilian deaths they have caused.”
Sell, a 43-year-old medically retired Army veteran with 10 years of service, said that while he more closely aligns with the Democratic Party on the issues such as abortion, gun legislation and voting rights, his stance against the unconditional military aid sent to Israel is of such importance to him that he would vote third party were it not for the threat he believes Donald Trump and efforts such as Project 2025 pose to American democracy.
Disillusionment and interest in third parties because of Israel’s actions are not unique to Sell. On Oct. 5 the UTD Muslim Student Association hosted a presidential candidate forum. Invitations were sent to the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian campaigns, but only the Green Party agreed to attend. Rafah Shaik, a UTD MSA officer, said there were roughly 800 RSVPs for the discussion with presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Butch Ware. More than 500 attendees packed the Student Services Building Addition auditorium that night.
Stein and Ware received two standing ovations from students and community members as they discussed key parts of their party platform, with particular emphasis on their desire for an end to what they described as "apartheid" and "genocide" in Palestine. (Editor's note: Their words, not ours. Human rights groups, agencies of the U.N. and former President Jimmy Carter have applied the label apartheid to Israel, drawing criticism and counter arguments. South Africa accused Israel before the Court of International Justice of committing genocide in Gaza. The court ordered Israel to take steps to avoid committing genocide, but "took a very cautious approach to this case and was careful not to suggest that Israel is committing genocide," according to a explanation published the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House. As with most aspects of the history Israel and Palestine, viewpoints vary greatly.)
“At UTD a lot of us are less hopeful about these upcoming elections, and we wanted to shed a light on what voting can mean when you make a space for your voice to be heard,” Shaik said.
Local Politics
With over 300 student organizations, there is always some sort of event going on at UTD, and many involve either local politicians or local activism.The Legislative Affairs Committee of the UTD Student Government has in the past worked to host voter registration drives, brought politicians to campus and has advocated for the university to publicize the location of the two on-campus polling locations.
David Baker, the committee chair for legislative affairs, says the group is working on a party to the polls project for Nov. 5 to help get students to polling locations. On Oct. 30, they also plan on hosting “Meet your Candidates for Texas Congress,” a panel for politicians in and around the UTD area to come and interact with students. Baker says that so far Democrats Averie Bishop and David Carstens have both confirmed their presence. Republicans Matt Shaheen and Angie Chen Button have already declined, and the committee is waiting on the responses from more than 10 other candidates.
The Student Government also passed a resolution calling for faculty to excuse student absences on Election Day. “We can’t enforce a voter holiday, but we are trying to encourage professors to excuse absences on Election Day to encourage more people to go out and vote,” Baker said.
Since the start of the fall semester, various on- and off-campus groups have provided daily opportunities for students to register to vote. Baker said that his committee’s voter registration drive faced a fundamental issue, not because students weren’t interested but because so many of them were already registered to vote.
Beyond registering students to vote, on-campus groups like Comets for Better Transit dedicate their time to attending local City Council meetings and DART board meetings to provide a crucial student perspective on issues facing the university such as the need for more housing developments around campus with an emphasis on mixed use and transit-oriented designs.
Comets for Better Transit President Chandu Garapaty has seen the organization grow dramatically in the past few years as more students become interested in transportation issues, The organization continues to realize success on issues like zoning for new housing developments around campus and increased frequency for the 883 DART route.
“I know that the race on the presidential level is taking up most of the media’s attention, but I really hope people vote down the ballot, since state and local positions have such a major impact on our daily lives,” Garapaty said.
Garapaty has been particularly concerned about the recent push by cities including Plano and Rowlett to decrease DART funding, and she appreciates that many members of the Richardson City Council understand the value of public transportation. Alongside organizations like the Dallas Area Transit Alliance, Comets for Better Transit plans to advocate in defense of DART at the next Texas legislative session.
“Is it always this scary?" – Joshua Farris, UTD student
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Benjamin Goodine, vice president of Comets for Better Transit, said that most of their support has come from off-campus and that UTD had in the past been quite difficult to work with if not outright opposed to initiatives such as new housing developments independent from the university.
“It has been tough with UTD since sometimes they just don’t show up to council meetings, and when they show up they are usually against competition,” Goodine said. “They were against some housing proposals being built around campus because they weren’t going to be running it. It was just kind of weird”
State Politics
The passage of SB 17 left various student services without any sort of direction or support. This led to groups such as Student Government’s Diversity Equity and Belonging Committee taking on the burden of hosting these events without direct university support any more.Student Government Sen. Alexander de Jesus-Colon said that on a social level, the end of DEI programs sent shockwaves across campus. Student organizations were left in the dark regarding how they would fund their multicultural or LGBTQ-affirming events. The Lavender Graduation and National Coming Out Day, both previously overseen by dedicated offices on campus, now fell to students if such events were to occur again. Diversity Equity and Belonging Committee chair Nandita Kumar said that her committee sorted through the various services provided by the closed DEI office and the services that had not been relocated to other offices and would work to sustain as many as they possibly could.
“I hope very soon there won’t be a position like what I am in right now, one in which a student has to run a graduation ceremony before they have even graduated because that is a little ridiculous,” Kumar said. “We shouldn’t have to host community events with no support from the university. And, we shouldn’t have to exist in a way in which our identities are treated hostilely by the state. It is disheartening to know that there are elected officials out there who think that they can get away with things like this because the harm that they cause is so beyond belief, and they don’t realize it because they sit in their chambers and write laws about people they have never met, people whose stories they have never heard, and people whose experiences they will never understand.”
Kumar and her committee say they have found it greatly rewarding to be able to have such a meaningful and tangible effect on their peers. To Kumar this is not an issue merely for those who come from a marginalized background because at a university such issues affect everyone. If students across the entire institution are struggling, then the institution is struggling; if the students are succeeding, then the institution is succeeding. Students can do their best to preserve the services that were once handled by professional staff, but Kumar has already seen the negative effects of these state-level decisions.
“We have a thriving academic environment, but we are losing that. I have already had professors leave UTD,” Kumar said. “We are seeing students who do not even want to come to Texas, and that affects the student experience. I see this, and I worry about the future of UTD and schools like it, but I am glad to be in this space and doing this work. It gives me hope for the future.”
Kumar and de Jesus-Colon both emphasized that it was ultimately students who stepped up to fill the holes created by state legislators. De Jesus-Colon said that although this political struggle against state legislators had been draining, the bonds and alliances student groups formed during this period have endured, and now those students are looking for more from the university and their elected officials.
Federal Politics
Joshua Farris, an interdisciplinary studies junior, will vote in a presidential election for the first time this year. He has had one question for the older adults in his life: “Is it always this scary?“Perhaps I spend too much time reading the news for my own good,” Farris said. “Perhaps the stakes really are higher this time. Either way, I’m voting like my rights depend on it, and I’m encouraging those I know to do the same. Because they do.”
Callie Sparks, a political science senior, feels frustrated and disenfranchised by the American political system because of the constant back and forth of misinformation as rights get stripped away.
“I feel that the American political system is anti-female,” Sparks said. “There are many days when I realize that, even though the fight for women's rights has come very far. There are so many instances where America makes being a female a disadvantage in life.”
Leon Hayden, an international political economy junior, says that throughout his life there have been multiple instances in which the American political system did not seem to have his best interest at heart, amidst a hectic election season.
“Overall, I’m exhausted,” Hayden said. “From having multiple attempts on [the life of] a party’s candidate to the outright degradation and slander aimed at the first Black/Asian female candidate.”
At UTD, students are not voting for the candidate they want as president but rather for the one they would dislike less as president. Feelings of disenfranchisement run rampant, and criticisms of the two-party political system are the norm. Students look beyond just the process of voting and instead emphasize the constant grind of activism if any progress is to be made in addition to electoral participation.
“I think people should really focus on the tangible ways in which they can make change, because while we can all go vote, at the end of the day, if someone is hungry then they are hungry,” Kumar said. “Let’s come together and donate and work towards the issues we care about.”
