Why the New College of Florida Story Matters: It's 'Ground Zero' for the Anti-DEI Takeover of Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Why the New College of Florida Story Matters: It's 'Ground Zero' for the Anti-DEI Takeover of Higher Education

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

January 27, 2026

If you want to understand where the anti-DEI movement on college campuses is headed, you have to understand what happened at New College of Florida.

New College is not an isolated case. It is the prototype.

As the Sun Sentinel editorial board makes painfully clear, the takeover of this small public honors college was never about “balance,” “intellectual diversity,” or improving outcomes for students. It was a deliberate political experiment—one that swapped a nationally respected academic model for ideological spectacle, managerial bloat, and institutional decay. This is not hyperbole.

After Governor Ron DeSantis stacked the board with political loyalists and installed a former state politician as president, New College fell dramatically in national rankings, hemorrhaged faculty, and saw graduation rates collapse. Costs skyrocketed. Academic programs were dismantled. Books were literally thrown in dumpsters. Faculty—especially faculty of color—were denied tenure under opaque and troubling circumstances.

And yet, readers of the The New York Times would barely know any of this. Sure, their journalists trekked to NCF, but they got the story wrong, as claimed by the editors of the Sun Sentinel in "The rest of a very sad story at New College" posted below.

That’s why this Sun Sentinel piece posted below matters. It fills in what was omitted: the math, the governance failures, the political patronage, and the culture-war theatrics.

What happened at NCF was not a modest shift in educational philosophy or governance. It was a hostile institutional capture, carefully timed to coincide with Governor DeSantis’s national political ambitions and now widely understood as a prototype—a governance model designed for export. The editorial rightly observes that this episode is increasingly viewed as a preview of the institutional regime that allies of Donald Trump would seek to impose on elite institutions across the country, Texas foremost among them at the current moment.

Sadly, I write this in the wake of the dismantling of the core academic program at the University of Texas at Austin (Valenzuela, 2026).

That is why New College is ground zero for the anti-DEI takeover of higher education.

If we fail to learn from this case—if we treat it as a Florida oddity rather than a national warning—we should not be surprised when similar playbooks appear at other public universities, under the banner of “anti-woke” reform.

This is not about one campus. It is about the future of academic freedom, public higher education, and whether universities will be governed by scholarship—or by ideology.

Reference

Valenzuela, A. (2026, Jan. 26). UT Austin is dismantling its academic core—and calling it “optimization”, Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2026/01/ut-austin-is-dismantling-its-academic.html

The rest of a very sad story at New College

Ever since Gov. Ron DeSantis (left) appointed former House Speaker Richard Corcoran president of New College, spending has risen while the school’s academic credentials have dropped. Corcoran makes more than $1 million a year to run a school with 900 students. (Tampa Bay Times)

By Sun Sentinel Editorial Board | Sun Sentinel
PUBLISHED: January 2, 2026 at 10:36 AM EST

The academic money pit that has become New College of Florida received kid-glove treatment in The New York Times, but it’s because nobody checked the math. There’s a cost to swapping out curriculum that produced Fulbright scholars for beach volleyball scholarships, and The Times missed it.

It’s important to set the record straight on New College, because what happened there has never been about one school.

The Sarasota honors college is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ prototype for quashing campus speech and dismantling academic inquiry. There’s speculation that it is what Donald Trump plans for Harvard.

Yet the Times article did not mention that after DeSantis stacked the college’s Board of Trustees with MAGA partisans and installed a political crony as president in 2023 who promptly hired his cronies, New College plummeted 59 places to 135th in U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings.

It did not report that New College once produced more Fulbright scholars than any other Florida state school per capita, and that in 2024, only about two of every 10 New College students graduated. The article parroted talking points on rising student enrollment but not the hiring of a student retention officer to try and keep students from leaving.

Skyrocketing costs

In the Times, New College President Richard Corcoran shrugged off $83,207 per student in operating expenses, almost four times the average of all other Florida state colleges and universities.

But there was no mention of Corcoran’s equally controversial $1.3 million annual compensation package to run a school of roughly 900 students. By contrast, the University of Florida’s president oversees 61,890 students for an annual compensation package of about $3 million. And although UF is a major research institution, its degrees cost just $150,729 to produce, state records show, while New College degrees cost $494,715.

Nor did the article reference gender studies books thrown into a dumpster without notice, or the New College trustee who applauded it as “taking out the trash.”

There were no questions about how a scholarship set aside for a person of color hasn’t been given out in years, or why four of five professors approved for and then abruptly denied tenure were minorities.

There was no note of a trustee’s description of mostly male student athletes being recruited to “rebalance the hormones and politics” on campus. The article missed the reopening of the campus cafe by a vendor with reported business ties to Corcoran’s wife, Anne, who uses coffee cups with a bible verse; there was nothing about the school accepting a “Christian” alternative to the SAT college entrance exam, offered by a company also tied to a DeSantis-appointed New College trustee.

A Charlie Kirk statue

The story does not question why, if the goal were only to balance liberal and conservative views, New College plans to erect a statue of hard-right ideologue Charlie Kirk on its front lawn.

The article quotes two current professors but doesn’t explore why other faculty members critical of the school were too frightened to speak on the record in what Corcoran described as a campus finally open to different opinions.

Everything’s fine, the article suggested. The DeSantis takeover was simply a tweak to educational philosophy.

It isn’t and it wasn’t.

There’s talk of privatizing the college, in part because the spending is unsustainable. And the DeSantis takeover was as much campaign strategy as ideology. It coincided with the launch of his failed “anti-woke” presidential campaign, generating free national publicity and MAGA bona fides far beyond Florida.

DeSantis isn’t done with New College. Far from it. His proposed state budget resurrects a plan to “give” New College 32 acres and 11 buildings belonging to the University of South Florida’s Sarasota-Manatee campus.

But it’s no gift: New College would also absorb the campus’ liabilities. New College’s already bloated balance sheet could be saddled with paying USF’s $53 million bill for the new dorm on the property (where most dorm rooms are used by New College students). Still, the proposed transfer is strongly opposed by many USF supporters.

For its misleading omissions, the Times story deserves a flunking grade. But then, so too do the ideological architects undermining New College.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

It’s time for parents and students to protect the public education opportunities they want, by Mica Pollock and Hirokazu Yoshikawa

Friends,

Drs. Mica Pollock and Hirokazu Yoshikawa’s incisive study lays bare the chilling effects of Florida’s sweeping K–12 restrictions—policies that have become a national model for dismantling public education under the guise of “parents’ rights.” Sounds like Texas where rhetoric of "parental rights" are being invoked selectively—not to genuinely expand educational opportunity, but to rationalize top-down control, ideological censorship, and the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

A crucial point is that "the majority of U.S. parents want their children to learn to think critically and feel included in school as core aspects of gaining skills."

Their research reveals a sobering picture of fear, erasure, and systemic harm. Teachers are silenced, books pulled, AP courses and identity-affirming texts denied, and professional development slashed. To avoid vague punishments, educators abandon best practices and inclusive teaching, stripping vital supports from students. Rather than protecting families, these policies divert resources toward censorship, undermining the core purpose of public education.

Pollock and Yoshikawa urge parents, students, and communities to reclaim their educational rights and defend inclusive, opportunity-rich schools. Research shows students thrive when affirmed and challenged—requiring more diverse books, honest history, and support, not less. 

The anti-DEI backlash endangers not just marginalized groups but public education itself. 

Pollock and Yoshikawa call for bold, collective resistance: backing educators, speaking out, and exposing the harm of policies disguised as protection. They call for bold, collective resistance: backing educators, speaking out, and exposing the harm of policies disguised as protection. 

I'm generally not the "doom and gloom" person in the room, but truly, if we stay silent, we may soon find there’s little left of public education to defend.    

-Angela Valenzuela


It’s time for parents and students to protect the public education opportunities they want

By Mica Pollock and Hirokazu Yoshikawa

Access paper here.

May 13, 2025 | PEN America

The Trump administration has furiously targeted and cut student support efforts it feels are related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Trump’s Department of Education even threatened to withdraw baseline federal funding from children if K-12 educators support kids with “DEI programs” or “DEI practices” or instruction that the administration has suddenly and vaguely –and unlawfully, according to the courts — deemed “illegal.”

While various states resisted, some states agreed to review and reduce all K-12 DEI programming themselves to align with the Trump team’s anti-“DEI” demands. Judges blocked enforcement of some of these federal demands, finding they were making educators afraid to teach and support students.

So now the nation needs to ask: what else happens to education opportunity throughout K-12 systems when policymakers ramp up such threats and attacks?

The nation has an example to learn from. Our new study in Florida, The Limitation Effect, shows how policymakers pressuring restriction and “bans” on K-12 efforts to support students can end up hurting everyone.

Since 2021, Florida has been the test case for policy threatening and restricting K-12 education. Policymakers have amplified caricatures of what teachers are doing and created a suite of laws, regulations, and related state guidance to restrict education efforts. Florida policies have gone the furthest in the nation in targeting K-12 discussions of race and student supports around sexual orientation and gender identity. Policies threaten financial consequences for districts and individual educators’ employment; mandate and pressure employees into widespread vetting of materials; and actively invite individuals to try to restrict K-12 materials for everyone, including for containing any “sexual conduct.” Florida has the nation’s most book bans.

American parents should be worried. Policymakers now in and advising the Trump administration previously promoted policy elements present in Florida and are pressuring related and even broader restrictions nationwide.

Our 86 study participants, largely school-level educators and parents from 26 Florida districts, shared examples of how Florida’s restrictions harm education both for targeted subgroups and for all students as people throughout systems focus energy on limiting basic student supports.

As restriction and review pressures cascaded through systems, some teachers avoided books even mentioning “racism,” afraid they might be “unauthorized” – or said they felt afraid even to keep teaching “the African American experience in the U.S.” Librarians felt they couldn’t order books “speaking to” Black and Latino students, or books with LGBTQ characters. Educators and students became afraid to mention LGBTQ people, even their own families. Some educators stopped using youths’ preferred names. Some inclusive clubs were closed.

And study participants described more harms that spread even further across the education system as policies compounded. Despite state language about “parents’ rights,” parents were often unaware of the learning opportunities being taken from everybody’s children:Afraid for their jobs, some teachers boxed up or stopped using entire classroom libraries to avoid punishment.

Some avoided discussing basic aspects of U.S. history in class.
Some stopped using any literature other than textbooks, to be “safe.”
Educators removed safe space signs and reduced efforts to build rapport with students.

To root out “age inappropriate” material per the state, scared educators removed books for advanced readers.

In state-pressured review processes, some educators threw out books that had inspired low-income readers learning English.

Students were denied access to specific AP courses, including, statewide, the College Board’s AP African American Studies pilot.

Some librarians and entire districts removed award-winning classics that included any mention of sexual conduct.

Educators and some systems cut off student access to the public library, or stopped using national digital collections supporting struggling readers/students with disabilities, because K-12 employees could not re-review every text for content possibly prohibited by the state or disliked by an individual.

State reviewers canceled some teacher professional development on supporting all students academically, for including discussions of “equity.”

Professional development on diagnosing disabilities accurately—to avoid misplacing students generally as well as “black and brown children” particularly— was limited to avoid discussing “bias.”

Lengthy state review of materials for compliance with new restrictions held up resources for blind students, and health curriculum for some entire districts.

A district educator was spending paid time seeking lessons that did not mention “Black Lives Matter.”

Some districts spent hundreds of thousands of public dollars re-reviewing and removing books.

Some already-purchased books were thrown away.

The bottom line: the policies pressured K-12 systems to spend time, public funds, and energy on limiting student access to ideas, information, and supports, rather than expanding education opportunity. Such limitations cut into the bone of public school opportunities for everyone, to please the most extreme and restrictive voices.

In our study, many educators and parents described desires to leave Florida’s public education system due to these restrictions on top of existing stressors. As one Florida teacher put it: “I want to leave. I hate almost everything about ‘teaching’ because we are restricted on every level.”

The nation will endanger students’ futures and public schooling itself if we move further in the restriction direction.

Parents and students have a solution as the government threatens schools: more can speak up loudly for the inclusive and opportunity-rich public schools they want. Restriction policies threaten to halt the very areas of improvement that researchers call for and students need.

 Research shows all students benefit from multiple perspectives in books and classrooms, welcoming environments, and open discussions about society as they prepare for careers and college. The majority of U.S. parents want their children to learn to think critically and feel included in school as core aspects of gaining skills. We can debate best paths to these goals, but taking opportunities away from students and public schools is not “parents’ rights.” It’s time for more students, parents, and community members to say so.

In their schools and districts, to the media, at state legislatures and school board meetings, to their elected representatives, and to the feds– at every level where decisions are made— students and parents can blunt ideologically-driven calls to “ban” by focusing on supporting and discussing educators’ efforts to improve public schools for all students and expand opportunity so all children succeed. They can explain and demand more of the teaching, books, support, and programming that help all students develop skills and feel they belong. They can back up specific teachers, schools, districts, and students under attack; they can demand reinstatement of opportunities removed. Organizations to join exist nationwide.

By speaking up for schools’ best efforts to support all students, they can help stop efforts to crush America’s public schools.

That’s reclaiming education “rights.”

Mica Pollock is Professor of Education Studies at UC San Diego, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa is Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education and University Professor at NYU.

The Chaos of Compliance in Texas and Florida by Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks

This is a helpful, descriptive piece on DEI implementation in Florida and Texas from the March 2024 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education,

Best,

-Angela Valenzuela

The Chaos of Compliance: How Public Colleges in Two States are Actually Responding to DEI Bans 

‘New Terrain’
By Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks 

March 22, 2024

After Texas acted last year to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public colleges statewide, students like Kaitie Tolman were eager to offer the programming their institutions no longer could.

The path to doing so seemed clear: Senate Bill 17, which took effect January 1, exempted student groups from its provisions, which included the banning of DEI offices and employees. But Tolman, a fifth-year student at the University of Houston and former president of the LGBTQ student organization GLOBAL, quickly learned that students’ hopes to take up the defunct programs wouldn’t be so simple.

When Tolman and her peers tried to determine what exactly was being eliminated on their campus, they were met with vague email responses from administrators and a couple of confusing meetings. Everyone they talked to reassured the students that they would help in any way they could. But when Tolman asked for specific details, like how to organize an LGBTQ graduation ceremony, many said they weren’t able to help out of fear of legal repercussions, she said.

To Tolman, administrators appeared to “err on the side of caution” in talking with students about DEI programming at all. As a result, students were being told they could supplement programs being lost, while simultaneously being blocked from any information about what those programs were. “We very much felt the solution they came up with was, ‘Well, y’all figure it out,’” Tolman said. “‘We were happy to help you, as long as we don’t have to actually do anything.’”

Tolman and her peers aren’t the only ones left in the dark about the consequences of anti-DEI legislation. Since last year, eight states have passed laws curtailing the type of diversity initiatives state-funded colleges can offer. Yet public knowledge of the laws’ on-the-ground effects has largely been limited to sporadic local news coverage, and sometimes filtered through politically distorted channels.

To assess how colleges have changed in response to these new laws, The Chronicle surveyed public colleges in two states that have enacted them: Texas and Florida. Of the 137 colleges surveyed, about 40 percent answered, many of which offered detailed accounting of changes they have made to comply with the laws. (Several other colleges answered, but failed to address The Chronicle’s specific questions or declined to participate.)

The result is the most comprehensive portrait yet of how colleges are reshaping themselves in response to legislation targeting DEI. And it reveals that campuses are reacting inconsistently — some dramatically and others not at all.

Nearly four dozen campuses in the two states offered substantive responses to The Chronicle: Over all, 24 colleges made changes to an office or department; 23 cut or reassigned jobs; seven ended DEI training for admission or employment; two axed funding for DEI activities; and 15 eliminated other DEI-related programming. Interestingly, 19 said they were already in compliance with the law and didn’t have to alter anything.

The responses yielded a familiar aura of uncertainty as administrators grapple with what is permissible under the legislation. The changes campuses did make varied greatly. While one Texas college eliminated its multicultural center, another opened one to replace its DEI office. While some colleges in Florida have simply reassigned their DEI employees, the University of Florida recently terminated 13 of its full-time staff. Experts previously told The Chronicle that the vague, sweeping laws leave large room for interpretation. The immediate effects, spelled out here, prove just how vast that gulf is in practice.

Activists and students like Tolman said The Chronicle’s findings illustrate a loss of community on campus. Programming offered to students, like social gatherings or counseling services, could dwindle. Some also worry that while some organizations are still running, they’ll lose funding and support. Students and faculty said they received little information about how administrators came to these decisions in the first place and worry colleges could be overreacting when so much is left up for interpretation.

“These DEI bills are new terrain. There’s not all this precedent that we have in other areas of the law. Florida and Texas are the vanguard,” said Antonio L. Ingram II, a civil-rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “They’re using these overly conservative hermeneutics to really render many of these exemptions not actionable, and students and faculty are suffering as a result.”

For the laws’ advocates, questions remain about how colleges are complying — if at all. As some colleges have simply changed an office’s name or reassigned programs, they worry there is still more to be done to eliminate DEI altogether. And with some campuses opening activities to “everyone” that were traditionally catered to one group, they’re concerned administrators are creating workarounds rather than eradicating DEI completely.

“I understand why some admins are engaging in massive resistance to the idea of the colorblind merit-based system that the legislature has required and that’s because it goes against their ideological priors,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, where he co-authored model legislation that many states have used in writing anti-DEI bills. “My answer to that is: tough. You have to follow the law.”

To some extent, the rollout of these laws has left no one satisfied. And with fresh legislation being proposed each month, what’s unfolding in Florida and Texas may provide a glimpse into a messy and chaotic future.

In early 2023, conservative lawmakers began pushing to abolish DEI practices, which advocates argue help to mitigate discrimination on campus and provide support to historically marginalized communities. Among the most common targets were standalone diversity offices, mandatory diversity training, and the use of diversity statements in hiring — practices that critics called ineffective and discriminatory in their own way.

“We must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said in a January 2023 speech that effectively kicked off his campaign to reshape public higher education in the state.

What followed was a bonanza of legislative activity taking aim at colleges’ DEI practices. Since The Chronicle started tracking the legislation last year, at least 81 bills have been introduced — including 37 this year alone — in 28 states. The bills are often modeled after proposed legislation from the Goldwater and Manhattan Institutes, two conservative think tanks.

In Texas, Senate Bill 17 banned state funding of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Following months of debate and amendments to the bill, the final version prohibited colleges from establishing a diversity, equity, and inclusion office, which it defines as a “unit of an institution” that influences hiring practices or promotes differential treatment of people based on race, color, or ethnicity. It also refers to an office that conducts training and programs on race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

The law, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, also bans colleges from hiring a person to perform the duties of a DEI office, requiring diversity statements, or mandating training that refers to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation, while exempting course instruction, research, and student organizations. (Section 59 of the state’s appropriations bill also banned spending on “unconstitutional” DEI programs.)

In Florida, House Bill 931 and Senate Bill 266 prohibited “political loyalty tests” as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in hiring or promotion, and banned colleges from spending state or federal money on programs that “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism.”

The Senate bill also carved out exemptions for student organizations, stating they can still receive funding through student fees and may use college-owned facilities, as well as programs that are required to comply with federal law, necessary to obtain accreditation, or those approved by the State Board of Education or the Board of Governors. After a series of amendments, DeSantis signed both bills into law in May. In January the Board of Governors banned Florida’s 12 public campuses from using state or federal dollars toward diversity programs or activities, aligning with the law.

Now that the laws have gone into effect, the impacts have emerged piecemeal through scattered news stories, general-counsel guidance documents, and reports from political actors watching the changes take shape on the ground. The resulting landscape — and the reasoning behind campuses’ responses — has been anything but clear.

To try to establish a clear picture of how campuses have responded to the legislation, The Chronicle contacted the two states’ public colleges between late January through the beginning of March. We asked for information on any updates the colleges had made to offices, programs, jobs, training, courses, and funding efforts in order to comply. While local media reports have captured a number of the individual changes that have transpired since the laws passed, this analysis focuses solely on the responses we collected.

Some campuses took sweeping action. The University of Houston told The Chronicle it nixed more than 40 student-affairs activities along with its LGBTQ Resource Center. The university also closed its Center for Diversity and Inclusion, opening up the Center for Student Advocacy and Community in its place and moving five employees into new roles.

That exemplified what The Chronicle found across other Texas colleges: Ten institutions created a new office after eliminating one, and four colleges changed the name of an old office. Names that included the words diversity, equity, or inclusion were out, replaced by terms like “engagement,” “community,” and “belonging.” For example, the University of North Texas and Texas Woman‘s University both created new centers — the Center for Belonging and Engagement and the Center for Belonging and First-Generation Students, respectively — to replace their shuttered DEI offices.

In Florida, colleges took an even more sweeping approach, often cutting programs and offices without any mention of a replacement. Florida State University and the Universities of Florida, South Florida, and North Florida reported to The Chronicle that they had eliminated their DEI offices, and reassigned or changed the roles of any DEI staff. Florida State and the University of Florida were the only colleges across both states that reported changes to funding practices. Florida State terminated a DEI mini-grant program, memberships to DEI organizations, and subscriptions to DEI-related publications, while the University of Florida re-routed $5 million in DEI funds to a faculty-recruitment fund.

The University of Florida was the only campus that said it had fired staff as a result of new laws. Others reassigned employees or changed their roles, and a handful said they let vacant posts remain unfilled. Florida State told The Chronicle it “repurposed” two human-resources positions that focused on DEI, while another position’s DEI-related responsibilities were replaced with other tasks. At Seminole State College, the former chief DEI officer became the “Associate Vice President for Organizational Culture and Strategy/Title IX Coordinator.”

It wasn’t always clear how new offices or titles represent different missions. Some colleges specified to The Chronicle that their newly created departments would support all students, or pointed to certain services for pregnant, first-generation, and veteran students within revamped offices.

Such changes have elicited suspicion from conservative lawmakers and accusations from some DEI opponents that colleges are attempting to subvert the legislation. “The idea that these changes are cosmetic, and that the administrators at these universities have not examined their goals with DEI, is disheartening and problematic because it clearly states that improving outcomes for Texas students is not a priority for them,” said Sherry Sylvester, a fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Austin.

But DEI proponents argue that name changes are far from superficial and make it more difficult for students to find services that meet their needs. “The lack of transparency about how to find a resource that used to be obviously available, that’s a harm to students, and that’s a harm that’s due to compliance with a bill that erases DEI institutions,” said Ingram, the Legal Defense Fund attorney.

Whether these new offices, job titles, or other changes will stick remains to be seen. Already at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the college told The Chronicle that it had walked back its plans to launch a new center, the Office of Campus and Community Belonging, in place of its shuttered Office of Inclusive Excellence. It cited an “evolving understanding of SB 17 as well as continuing voluntary changes in staffing and personnel reappointments from that office.”

As colleges have taken steps to comply with the law, some campus community members say how they have gone about it has been shrouded in secrecy.

After Tolman, the University of Houston student, struggled to find information about what was being cut, she and other students filed a public-records request to get a precise answer. The list they received, which the university shared with The Chronicle, enumerated eliminations across identity-based hubs, as well as other departments such as student housing and residential life, counseling and psychological services, and university career services. A note next to nearly every program suggested that student groups could take it over — which struck Tolman as frustratingly ironic, given the resistance she had encountered in trying to do just that.

In response to The Chronicle’s inquiry, the university recognized its student-organization exemption but said it “did not go about assigning tasks/events to students,” and each student group “would need to make the decision on whether it wants to pursue any of the programming or events.” Texas A&M University had a similar response, saying that some student organizations had taken over programs that were previously organized by the Pride Center. Dallas College also pointed to its student-organization exemption in its response, noting that student groups may host a multicultural event or program, “even one that may include DEI elements.”