Students at the University of Texas at Austin said they were dismayed \u2014 but unsurprised \u2014 by the racist attacks lobbed at them online after a Republican candidate for statewide office suggested white Americans were being \u201cdisplaced.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bo French, the Republican running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state\u2019s oil and gas industry, on Sunday posted racist comments on X that included an image of UT students of South Asian descent celebrating the victory. <\/p>\n
\u201cI heard UT graduation this year looked like this,\u201d French wrote in a post<\/a> featuring a photo of the students. \u201cI didn\u2019t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.\u201d <\/p>\n On Monday, French defended his comments on a conservative radio talk show. But by then, the posts had reverberated across social media, attracting comments like \u201cBollywood University\u201d \u201cAre we watching a cricket game,\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t know the stadium was in India,\u201d and \u201cThe America we grew up in no longer exists.\u201d<\/p>\n Dhairya Gupta, a senior at the University of Texas, is included in the bottom right of the photo, wearing a burnt orange T-shirt with his right arm extended into a \u201cHook \u2018em Horns\u201d hand sign. He said he\u2019s accustomed to seeing racist comments online, but it was \u201cinsane\u201d to see a Republican candidate say derogatory things about him and his friends.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I look at that picture, I don\u2019t see a problem,\u201d Gupta said in an interview Monday with The Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n The controversy is the latest in a long line of incendiary comments made by French that have been condemned by his fellow Republicans, many of whom have endorsed him. <\/p>\n The comments also follow years of conservative lawmakers attacking diversity, equity and inclusion policies at public universities like UT. <\/p>\n French \u2014 who did not immediately respond to a request for comment \u2014 referred to the students\u2019 picture as \u201cforeigners\u201d who displaced Americans, without having any information about their status. The citizenship status of all the students in the photo are unknown, although Gupta told The Dallas Morning News<\/a> he is a naturalized citizen. <\/p>\n Under state law<\/a>, 90% of all UT freshmen are required to be in-state residents. <\/p>\n Approximately 26% of degree-seeking undergraduate students at UT are Asian, up from 20% a decade ago. About 29% of students are white, which is down from 44% in the same time period. UT has been prohibited<\/a> from considering race in its admissions process since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2023.<\/p>\n Students said the cohort of South Asian students at the football game happened partially by happenstance. Like everyone else, they and their friends waited many hours in line in the heat before the highly anticipated game against Ohio State and ran to the closest seats to the field when UT let them into the student section of the stadium.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you were at the game, you know that picture is taken extremely out of context,\u201d said Arsheeya Moyeen, a UT sophomore. \u201cI\u2019m gonna be completely candid. I think, as a politician, as somebody in the public eye, to take something like that out of context and manipulate it to fit your agenda and your views on a certain race is extremely unprofessional.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, shared a statement<\/a> online Monday evening \u2014 about a day after French\u2019s post \u2014 thanking students at the game for \u201cmaking us proud.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I stood on the sidelines at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night and looked up at the seats filled with incredible fans, I saw Longhorns,\u201d Eltife said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same remarkable view I have at graduation ceremonies and anytime I\u2019m on campus. I\u2019m proud to celebrate all our Longhorn students today and every day.\u201d<\/p>\n UT President Jim Davis said<\/a> in a follow-up social media post that the university\u2019s students were exceptional and \u201call of them are Longhorns.\u201d UT did not respond to a request for further comment.<\/p>\n The photo French shared is a screenshot from a video<\/a> that the official social media accounts of Texas Athletics posted Saturday evening. The 17-second vertical video shows a group of students in one part of the student section celebrating after the Longhorns scored a touchdown in the final minute of the game.<\/p>\n UT sophomore Lisa Varghese, who was sitting in the same section as Gupta and Moyeen, said she was shocked at the ignorance she saw on social media in response to the video and French\u2019s post. She said French was using skin color and \u201cblatant racism\u201d as a divisive factor to tear people apart.<\/p>\n \u201cTo complain about skin color and to complain about other people \u2018taking over\u2019 UT Austin and how disappointing that is is just disgusting,\u201d Varghese said. \u201cIt really is because I feel like football and sports (are) something that should be uniting. It should be a uniting factor. It should be something that we all come together to celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n Moyeen said racist posts on social media toward certain groups are disappointing, but she believes they have become normalized. She said she initially ignored the \u201chorrible racist generalizations\u201d under UT\u2019s initial video on social media \u2014 until French made his tweet.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will always be racist people out there who feel OK with hiding behind a screen and commenting things about people that they don\u2019t know, but for a politician running for a public office to come out and say those same hateful things just takes it to a whole different level that you truly can\u2019t ignore anymore,\u201d Moyeen said.<\/p>\n French said UT was \u201cfilled with foreign nationals\u201d and argued that the school has prioritized foreign students and workers. However, under state law, 90% of UT freshmen must be in-state residents, while the remaining 10% are international students or out-of-state students. International students comprised about 4% of undergraduates<\/a> in the 2025-26 school year.<\/p>\n UT offers automatic admission to all in-state residents in the top 5%<\/a> of their high school graduating class. Under state law, 75% of UT\u2019s freshman class must be admitted under this policy. The remaining students are admitted through a holistic process that considers factors such as grade point average, extracurriculars and personal essays.<\/p>\n Gupta said he\u2019s concerned at the broad sentiment of French\u2019s post and how many people publicly agreed with him. He said, though, it brought a smile to his face seeing the Longhorns who were vocally defending him, his friends and the other pictured UT students on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seemed like the actual Texas alumni seemed to be very passionate about the fact that these are also students at the university, and this is the university,\u201d Gupta said. \u201cIt\u2019s not defined by the demographic(s) of the university itself, but by the culture of the university.\u201d<\/p>\n Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a major financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in our journalism. Find a complete list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students at the University of Texas at Austin said they were dismayed \u2014 but unsurprised \u2014 by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,289,1724,287,293,16816,4102,2691,2877],"class_list":["post-436223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-higher-education","tag-immigration","tag-politics","tag-texas-legislature","tag-uncategorized","tag-university-of-texas-board-of-regents","tag-university-of-texas-system","tag-university-of-texas-austin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}