By David Hood-Nu\u00f1o<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) \u2013 A Republican nominee for a\u00a0Texas office drew bipartisan criticism after posting a photo from a University of Texas football game that critics called racist, portraying the Austin campus as dominated by foreign students contrary to enrollment data.<\/p>\n
Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, drew a sharp rebuke from fellow Republicans as well as Democrats after posting a crowd shot at \u200ba University of Texas football game, while suggesting that what appeared to be students of South Asian descent reflected a large foreign-born or \u200cinternational student presence on campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn\u2019t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,\u201d French posted to his X account. He went on to claim that UT prioritizes foreign students in admissions and feared Texans were losing opportunities at the university.<\/p>\n
\u201cI weep for the families in Texas who can\u2019t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But enrollment figures released by the University of Texas at Austin show international students account for less than 10% of the total \u200cstudent body. \u200bTotal enrollment reached\u00a055,000 students for the fall 2025 semester, including 5,140 international students. Texas residents make up 80.5% \u2060of all enrolled students.<\/p>\n
For the undergraduate class, international \u2060students make up 4.3%, and a state law requires 90% of every incoming freshman class to be Texas residents. UT Austin automatically admits the top 5% of performers \u2014 who are also Texas residents \u2014 at every high school in the state.<\/p>\n
The Texas legislature designed the initiative to promote diversity without explicitly considering race. As in most of the country, Texas high school students are separated by geography, income and demographics, and by guaranteeing admission to \u200btop students at each high school, the statewide policy helps ensure universities draw from a broad cross-section of Texas communities.<\/p>\n
That means more than 90% of students at UT Austin are domestic, and more than four out of every five are Texans.<\/p>\n
Vedant Nair, 24, who graduated from UT in 2024, said his parents immigrated \u2060to Oklahoma in the 1990s from Mumbai so his father could pursue an MBA at \u2060Oklahoma State University. Nair was born in Oklahoma City and recalls running around in a child-size OSU Cowboys football helmet \u200band driving a mini John Deere tractor. His upbringing, he said, was no different than those of his fellow Texans after his family moved to Dallas in elementary \u200bschool.<\/p>\n
Attending UT Austin was a dream come true, and a normal, American experience, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you stripped away my name and \u200cskin color, I think my story is pretty similar to a lot of other Texans at massive public high schools,\u201d Nair said. \u201cThe point is that myself, and all the other kids in that picture, are just regular American kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
University spokespeople and French did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The debate touches on a broader political argument that non-U.S. citizens are \u201cdisplacing\u201d American students at elite public universities, and the country at large.<\/p>\n
French\u2019s remarks drew criticism from political figures and other social media users, \u2060who characterized the posts as racist or xenophobic.<\/p>\n
Rodney Coates, a sociology professor at Miami University in Ohio, said French\u2019s comments echoed longstanding anti-immigrant and anti-Asian narratives in the U.S. that have historically portrayed minority groups as threats to opportunities for others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easier to come up with a racist argument to organize a group \u2060of people under the presumption that, hey, they\u2019re hurting your \u200cchances,\u201d Coates said. Such appeals often have little to do with the people being targeted and instead seek to \u2060mobilize voters by portraying them as victims. \u201cHate is one of the easiest means of organizing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
University figures show \u200bwhite students \u200cmade up about 31.5% of enrollment in 2024 to 2025, Hispanic students 25.5% and Asian students 22.4%.<\/p>\n
University reporting \u200btreats race and ethnicity \u2060separately from international student status, meaning most students categorized as Asian are\u00a0U.S. citizens or permanent residents rather than international students.<\/p>\n
The image French shared\u00a0was a screenshot from a\u00a0video posted by the official athletics account at UT Austin. He did not include information identifying the citizenship, immigration status, residency or enrollment status of any individuals shown.<\/p>\n
For Nair, the unfortunate part of French\u2019s post was that it criticized a high point in school-pride history: the football team defeated The Ohio State University, the No. 1-ranked football team in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there is anything more American than people in cowboy hats yelling their heads off after one of the greatest comeback wins in college \u200bfootball history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Hood-Nu\u00f1o)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Hood-Nu\u00f1o WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) \u2013 A Republican nominee for a\u00a0Texas office drew bipartisan criticism after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-437749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437749","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=437749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}