UTA's public health program students bring National Public Health Week celebrations April 7 to 13. In recognition of the 30th annual National Public Health Week, the events teach students about vital public health initiatives and how to promote wellness. The program is using the key priorities of the American Public Health Association. Anita Corbitt, kinesiology clinical assistant professor, is the main organizer behind the event but had her internship students pitch their own ideas for each day. Public health seniors Millie Matos and Kesya Joy organized some of the events and said their main goal is to showcase the interdisciplinary nature of the public health field. “It’s the health of the public. Caring for more than just patient to patient,” Joy said. “The overall well-being of society and promoting wellness and health initiatives to be the best versions of ourselves.” NPHW Kick-Off Party The program’s first event will be 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 7 at the University Center’s Palo Duro Lounge, with tables featuring public health classes, programs and campus campaigns. There will also be interactive quizzes and giveaways, featuring photo opportunities with an “Among Us” character. Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration Tarrant County Public Health will sponsor the 10th annual Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration Community Partner Breakfast from 9 to 10 a.m. April 8 at the Maverick Activities Center’s back gym, and will provide updates on community outreach and grant project activities. Attendees must register for breakfast online. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Day in the Life of a Public Health Professional career exploration event will have presentations about public health careers and networking opportunities from professionals across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This will also give students the opportunity to engage and network with professionals. Attendees must register for this event online. Graduate Panel Discussion Public health graduate students will share their secrets to program success 10 a.m. to noon April 9 at The Commons Nueces B. Snacks and refreshments will be available, along with a 45-minute Q&A session for current and prospective students. Research Roundtable Following the graduate panel discussion students can attend this event 1 to 3 p.m. April 9 in Commons Nueces B. Kinesiology and public health faculty will share their ongoing research with students, which is meant to connect students with research opportunities and collaboration. The event includes a 30 to 45-minute Q&A session. Public Health Career Day Undergraduate and graduate public health students have the chance to explore careers in their field 9 a.m. to 1 p.m April 10 in the University Center’s Palo Duro Lounge. A professional headshot booth, on-site career assistance from the Career Development Center and public health employers will be present. Sexual Health Day Joy and Matos organized this event focusing on sexual health awareness and advocacy to be held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 11 in the University Center Concho Room. The event features Darryl Murdock, an HIV awareness and testing advocate, and gives students the opportunity to ask questions in the panel discussion. “Professor Corbitt and all of the interns have put in a lot of work and dedication, and we just want to showcase public health in the best way possible,” Joy said. @aizacore news-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu

The Faculty Senate discussed several topics during Wednesday’s meeting, including legislative session updates, new guidelines for reviewing academic programs and a state-mandated review for minors and certificate programs. UTA President Jennifer Cowley said all legislative bills were due last week, so she has a good grasp of what the university can expect moving forward in the session. The most crucial bill the university is monitoring is Senate Bill 37, which focuses on higher education oversight, she said. SB 37 is likely to incorporate other bills in addition to its current proposal, serving as a “master bill,” Cowley said. Currently, SB 37 involves topics including the governance of faculty senates and university minors and core curricula. “This is the bill that will pass, and so it's one that we have to have acute attention to and awareness of, because we're going to be expected to implement whatever does ultimately get passed,” Cowley said. Tamara Brown, Academic Affairs provost and senior vice president, discussed recent proposed changes to the Texas Education Code. House Bill 4499 targets underperforming university minor and certificate programs by implementing a mandatory review process every four years. Programs not meeting the criteria will be consolidated or shut down. For graduate programs to pass, at least three enrolled students must complete the program in the two years prior to review. Additionally, programs must provide industry data to demonstrate workforce demand. Cowley said the legislature wants to ensure universities have a process for evaluating what they consider important for enhancing students' education. One of the bill’s benefits is its allowance for universities to determine the course offerings, with some caveats regarding graduation rates. “From my perspective that’s the least intrusive solution to address this concern that’s been raised about the nature of the minors and the content that we’re teaching,” Cowley said. Coincidentally, the university had already begun researching its minor and certificate programs, coinciding with UTA’s plans to review its programs and clean house on underutilized resources, Brown said. Their data, which recorded how many students completed each minor and certificate from 2017 to 2023, showed several programs with 10 or fewer completions. The university is also planning revisions to major programs. Andrew Hippisley, Academic Affairs vice provost, spoke to the senate about an initiative to redesign the university’s academic program review process to the senate. The initiative aims to use workforce preparation as a review criterion, as opposed to asking how many students are enrolled in a program and what research its faculty offers. The plan requires 52 degree programs to submit an action plan by the end of April, with implementation set to begin by late summer, Hippisley said. Cowley said they aren’t asking professors to prepare students for every single possible career outcome but to pick a handful and say, “These are the ones we're really going to focus on.” “Our students expect when they graduate, they will get a job that requires a college degree, or they will be prepared for graduate school,” Cowley said. “We need to be able to articulate what it is that we're preparing our students for when they graduate.” @PMalkomes news-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu

The debate over what constitutes free speech and expression at public universities is being tested in new ways this spring as directives at the federal level continue to evolve. On March 27, three days after a federal judge temporarily blocked Texas A&M University System’s Board of Regents from enforcing a ban on drag shows, the annual Draggieland went on at the flagship university in College Station. The event, hosted independently by the student organization Queer Empowerment Council, was the subject of a First Amendment fight between students and university administrators over the past month. The Queer Empowerment Council, which fully funded this year’s Draggieland, argued that the show, and drag shows in general, are expressive conduct. The regents responded that it was unclear whether drag shows are expressive conduct. Statewide, public universities and their students have been battling over freedom of expression in campus facilities. Free speech, which has been perceived as a central value of college campuses, is now a part of a growing crackdown on political expression in ways that could potentially circumvent the U.S. Constitution. “Texas is a hotbed for these kinds of cases right now because there are federal judges in the state who are very open to these new arguments that have not worked for a century,” said Chip Stewart, an attorney and professor focused on media law and the First Amendment at Texas Christian University. In the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, which drew over 58,000 student responses across more than 250 colleges and universities nationwide, only one Texas university made the top 50: UT El Paso. Texas A&M University is ranked at 130, UTA is at 143 and UT Austin is at 244. University of North Texas, which directed presidents of each university on March 28 to pause any drag performances on campus or any state-funded facilities, is at 205. In her March 24 ruling in the Texas A&M System, Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas said the Queer Empowerment Council was likely to succeed in demonstrating how A&M’s ban violates the First Amendment. The court held that drag is a theatrical expression protected by the First Amendment. “Sanctioning a student group for sponsoring an event and precluding a student group from holding an event on campus based on the event’s content and viewpoint have the same result: stifling expression because it is offensive to some,” Rosenthal wrote. A few weeks after the Texas A&M regents’ decision that was appealed in court, the University of Texas System announced March 18 that its universities are banned from sponsoring drag shows or hosting them in campus facilities. The UT System consists of 14 institutions, including UTA and UT Dallas, serving more than 256,000 students. The UT System’s move to ban drag shows is “to comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws and executive orders, including any restrictions on the use of public funds,” said Kevin Eltife, Board of Regents chairman, in a statement. “If the Board of Regents needs to take further action to make this clear, we will do so,” Eltife said. While the UT System did not define what it considered a prohibited drag show, the Texas A&M regents cited five criteria in the adopted resolution that has since been challenged in court. It involves men dressed in women’s clothingThe performers wear makeup and/or prosthetics “meant to parody the female body type”The event is open to the publicIt involves “sexualized, vulgar or lewd conduct” It involves “conduct that demeans women” The UT System’s announcement came a few days after Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare urged the Board of Regents to follow the Texas A&M regents’ footsteps. O’Hare, a UT Austin alumnus, wrote in a letter to Eltife that UTA hosted an event in February that prominently featured a drag performer and urged the Board of Regents to pass a resolution banning drag shows on UT System campuses. It’s unclear what specific event he was referring to. “Drag shows highlight men reducing the perception of women to stereotypes and body parts,” O’Hare wrote. “I would be encouraged to see the UT System focus on fostering environments of learning and not use resources to prop up sexually-oriented events.” In February, the UTA’s Queer Social Work Association hosted its Queer, Sex and Power event in the School of Social Work and Smart Hospital building. The event featured a drag queen who is a UTA alum. The event was not funded using university money, said Elwim Sorto, co-founder and CEO of The Queer Social Work Association. Sorto said the event title drove the decision to have a drag queen on campus. “The power comes from celebrating and welcoming our culture in school because that’s where it belongs,” he said. “We’re a university at the end of the day. What we want is to create more innovation in the world.” UTA officials declined to comment for the story. For at least half a century, drag performance, dressing up, singing or dancing to music are all forms of expressive conduct that have been protected under the First Amendment, Stewart said. He pointed to the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines ruling as the bar for free speech in public schools. In December 1965, Mary Beth Tinker, 13, and a group of students wore black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. The students filed a First Amendment lawsuit when told that they could not return to school until they removed their armbands. The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the students. The ruling protects student speech that doesn’t substantially disrupt the educational vision of the public school, Stewart said. “The government says, ‘We don’t like this viewpoint, and therefore we want to ban it or limit it.’ Generally, courts don’t like that,” he said. “They say, ‘The First Amendment should tolerate speech we don’t like.’ This favored speech should not be limited by the government. That gives the government too much power to silence dissenting speech, speech they don’t like.” In 2024, after a decade of hosting annual drag shows in the University Center sponsored by campus departments using university funds, UTA students weren’t able to organize one of a similar scale following Texas Senate Bill 17 becoming law, which prohibited funding activities regarding diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Former organizers of the annual campus drag shows told The Shorthorn that the events were free, and profits went toward scholarships for students. A local organization later hosted a drag show less than a mile from campus. At the end of the day, a judge should know that “we all have the self pursuit of happiness,” whether they agree with it or not, Sorto said. In the Texas A&M regents’ arguments against campus drag shows, they said that they were complying with a recent executive order issued by President Donald Trump and supported by Gov. Greg Abbott. The regents’ decision was defended by the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Trump signed an executive order in January directing federal agencies to ensure that funds are not used to promote gender ideology. A few days later, Abbott signaled his support for Trump’s executive order and directed state agencies to reject efforts to “distort commonsense notions of biological sex.” Rosenthal wrote in her ruling that Draggieland was a ticketed event, and only those who wanted to attend had to do so. “Anyone who finds the performance or performers offensive has a simple remedy: don’t go,” she wrote. First Amendment advocates typically argue that campuses are generally places where different expressions and viewpoints are tolerated, Stewart said, and colleges that want to ban drag shows have historically allowed conservative speech on campus. He said he doesn’t see banning drag queens as the only way Texas universities, particularly UT Austin, have been aggressively attempting to silence political speech that would typically be protected in different states. It has also been applied to pro-Palestinian protests. “This is Governor Abbott and the University of Texas and Texas A&M System presidents and boards really trying to establish that they are in control of what is allowable speech, what is not allowable speech on their campuses,” Stewart said. “While people may think, ‘Oh, this is only about trans people’ or ‘Oh, this is only about drag performers,’ it’s a little part of a much bigger picture.” @DangHLe news-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu