By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The Daily Texan
If it wasn’t already clear enough, the UT System’s recent drag ban proves the Board of Regents prioritizes conservative ideology over students’ rights.
On March 18, the UT System Board of Regents announced that the University is no longer permitted to “sponsor or host drag shows in its facilities,” Randa Safady, the UT System’s vice chancellor for external relations, wrote in a statement. This decision followed a complaint from Tim O’Hare, a Tarrant County Judge and UT-Austin alumnus, about an event at UT-Arlington featuring a drag performer.
This choice betrays the principles that public universities are meant to uphold. According to The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, drag is considered “expressive speech” under the First Amendment. In the past, states have attempted to categorize drag as “legally obscene” content, an argument that has yet to hold up in federal court. Drag is not threatening or obscene content. It is a form of self-expression that the Board of Regents is targeting at the expense of students’ civil liberties.
The Board of Regents did not respond to requests for comment.
Since the Board of Regents does not explicitly define the term, there is no way to determine whether or not drag shows violate the Constitution’s or the Texas Penal Code’s definition of obscenity. If it does not, the UT System has no legal basis to ban them.
The Texas A&M University Board of Regents passed a similar drag ban in February, citing President Donald Trump’s executive order, which prohibits the use of federal funds in promoting “gender ideology.” “Draggieland,” a drag-centric event hosted by the Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council, was therefore banned. In response, the council sued the Texas A&M University System for censorship, and the bill has since been temporarily blocked. Judge Lee H. Rosenthal said the Queer Empowerment Council was likely to succeed in showing the ban violates the First Amendment.
Drag is a culturally significant style of gender expression. The historic artform, rooted in resistance in the face of oppression, rejects gender norms and embraces queer joy. Drag isn’t simply playing a role. It is a gender-inclusive performance art that celebrates resilience, entertains and highlights critical social issues. Drag is a beacon of hope for the LGBTQ+ community that a public university has no place in extinguishing.
“Every generation of people has some form of expression or entertainment that older generations just don’t really get,” First Amendment FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh said. “If you tell young people that your form of art is not protected by the First Amendment, that tends to send them a pretty reprehensible message that their speech should not be protected.”
Drag is hardly definable, regardless of political attempts to do so. The A&M Board of Regents’ ban referred to any performances in which “biological males” wear women’s clothing, makeup or prosthetics that “parody the female body type” as drag shows. Texas Senate Bill 12, a bill proposed in the previous legislative session, defined them as “sexually oriented performances.”
While both definitions did not withstand legal challenges, their severe lack of clarity may have troubling consequences for the broader queer community.
“(The ban) creates a justification for policing the presence of trans people,” said Jo Hsu, the associate chair of women’s, gender and sexuality studies. “If you create a ban on, supposedly, people wearing clothes of the ‘wrong gender,’ then that can very much be interpreted to be any trans person in public, or any gender non-conforming person.”
According to Safady, this new policy is “to be implemented by each UT System institution through their normal procedures for reviewing and approving campus events and the use of campus facilities and grounds.”
The UT System’s current ban does not offer any definition or enforcement tactics, leaving those decisions to each institution’s discretion.
Ambiguous guidelines for what constitutes drag could result in students repressing their personal identities for fear of potential repercussions.
Steinbaugh said the Board of Regents’ ban is even more likely to be labeled unconstitutional in court than Texas A&M’s due to its vague nature.
Because the UT System’s drag ban isn’t targeting a specific event, students cannot currently take legal action the way the Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council did. However, if UT actively shuts down a drag event, students have the right to take legal action and should.
This ban is not rooted in legal necessity but in increasing political pressure on the national and state levels, which sets a dangerous precedent for universities yielding to ideological agendas.
This Editorial Board opposes all attempts to ban drag and believes the Board of Regents should reverse its ruling to uphold our constitutional right to free speech at our University.
Drag isn’t a threat. A university system willing to ignore the First Amendment is.
The Editorial Board is composed of associate editors Emily Harrison, Tenley Jackson, Tanya Narwekar, Ava Saunders, Anjali Shenoy and editor-in-chief McKenzie Henningsen.