Texas
UT-Austin investigates students amid tensions over Israel-Hamas war
/static.texastribune.org/media/files/87b83acaf77aff25021daa1daa5d8e5a/1208%20TA%20Palestine%20Protest%20JS%2009.jpg?ssl=1 "UT-Austin investigates students amid tensions over Israel-Hamas war")
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Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.
The University of Texas at Austin is investigating four current and former students after a tense exchange in which the students demanded administrators reinstate two teaching assistants who were dismissed last year amid on-campus disputes over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Administrators have described the Dec. 8 incident as disruptive and potentially illegal. But the students under investigation say that characterization is overblown. They accuse UT-Austin officials of trying to quell their First Amendment right to protest and say the investigation is an example of how the university is targeting students who express support for Palestinians and Palestinian students.
“This is an attack on the civil liberties of all UT students,” Evan Scope-Crafts, a Ph.D. candidate and one of the students under investigation, told The Texas Tribune. “This is an attack on anybody who’s trying to fight for the rights of oppressed groups in the United States and abroad.”
The four students are Scope-Crafts, Valkyrie Church, Sameeha Rizvi and a student who wishes to remain anonymous. They received letters on Jan. 17 stating the university is investigating them because they “intentionally caused a disruption” inside a school administrator’s office.
The letter, provided to the Tribune by the students’ lawyer, said the students possibly violated university policies related to disruptive conduct, failure to comply with directives from officials and unauthorized entry into university buildings. It also says the university is investigating the students for potentially violating local, state or federal laws, but does not specify which laws.
“It seemed to be a chance, once again, to just censor and stop students from being able to organize effectively, especially where the administration doesn’t want to listen,” said Rizvi, who graduated from UT-Austin in December and is one of the four students under investigation.
UT-Austin did not respond Friday to a request for comment or questions about how administrators say the students’ exchange with Cole transpired.
According to Scope-Crafts and Rizvi, a group of 10 to 15 students entered the office suite for Allan Cole, the dean of the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, and were greeted by the administrative staff. They then entered Cole’s office, which was unlocked, and started reading a letter to him. In the letter, they demanded UT-Austin reinstate the teaching assistants who were dismissed last year and publicly state its support for “protecting freedom of speech for Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students on campus.”
Both students said Cole was on the phone when they entered his office. When the group of students read the letter, they said, Cole walked out of the room, went to another office and locked the door.
Rizvi said they handed the letter to his secretary and headed to a protest happening outside, where dozens of students were also voicing their concern with the school’s decision to remove the teaching assistants. Scope-Crafts said UT police showed up to the protest and started asking him questions about what happened inside the dean’s office. He said he spoke to police briefly before rejoining the protest.
The Dec. 8 protest stemmed from the university’s decision last November to dismiss two teaching assistants after they sent a message to their students sharing mental health resources for students affected by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The message also condemned the university for its “silence around the suffering many of our students, staff and faculty are experiencing.” The school removed the teaching assistants from their positions stating that their message was “inappropriate” and “unprompted.”
The teaching assistants’ dismissal occurred amid escalating tensions at college campuses across the country as students have clashed over their support of Israel and Palestine and demanded university leaders take a stand on the fraught and devastating conflict. At UT-Austin, some students called on university leaders to provide more support and protections for Palestinian students on campus. Around that time, Gov. Greg Abbott urged university leaders to protect Jewish students.
“You have a leadership responsibility to ensure that there was no one on your campuses that are advocating for genocide or anti-Semitisim,” he told a crowd at a higher education conference in Austin in December. “It is completely unacceptable in the state of Texas, period.”
Ever since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, some UT-Austin students have expressed their discontent with university leaders’ response to the conflict. Students said they were especially upset that the university did nothing to protect Palestinian students or show support after a group of men who appeared to be unaffiliated with the university interrupted a student meeting of the Palestine Solidarity Committee on Oct. 12 and started intimidating students, calling them “fucking terrorists.”
Students who were shaken by that event called on the university to condemn the harassment, but administrators stayed silent. The following day, President Jay Hartzell sent a message to the UT-Austin community announcing increased security for Jewish groups on campus, a move that left Palestinian students and their supporters feeling ignored.
The teaching assistants, Callie Kennedy and Parham Daghighi, were dismissed from their positions with pay shortly after, following a grievance filed with Cole about their Nov. 16 message. Cole said they would not be reinstated as teaching assistants the following semester.
Kennedy and Daghighi were later offered research assistant positions for the spring semester, but told the Tribune their dismissal still amounted to punishment. Students who joined the protest on Dec. 8 said the university’s decision to remove the teaching assistants was an “outsized reaction” and accused the university of suppressing academic freedom, a longstanding principle on college campuses that protects faculty’s speech and research from outside political interference.
Days after the students approached Cole in his office, UT-Austin said on social media the university was investigating multiple incidents they believed to be unacceptable.
“Protestors crossed the line of acceptable behavior and violated University rules multiple times this week,” the university posted on the social media platform X. “We will not tolerate disruptions to the teaching and research activities of our students, faculty and staff; our campus; or events. We are investigating and will punish those found to violate our rules, policies or the law.”
The post does not specifically mention the Dec. 8 incident, but links to an Austin American-Statesman article about the protest and said the “actions taken toward a University leader on Friday stem from intentionally false narratives and a coordinated disinformation campaign. We will protect speech, but we will not tolerate harassment, disruption, and dishonesty.”
Two days before the protest outside the school of social work, students also briefly interrupted a university-sponsored event with writer Bari Weiss, one of the founders of the recently created University of Austin, who was invited to campus to discuss the events in Israel and Gaza.
Scope-Crafts and Rizvi said they did not hear from the university again regarding the incident at Cole’s office until the first week of the spring semester when they received a letter from Katie McGee, executive director of the university’s Student Conduct and Academic Integrity department. McGee alerted them they were under investigation and that the university had scheduled a meeting with the students on Jan. 22. There, the office would share information they received related to the incident and allow them to respond.
According to UT-Austin’s student disciplinary procedures, the school is now expected to provide a ruling in the matter, called an administrative disposition. That document typically includes the university’s investigative findings, any sanctions and options for a resolution. Students can appeal the ruling in a hearing.
According to Scope-Crafts, Rizvi and their lawyer, George Lobb, who attended the meeting, university administrators would not exclude suspending or expelling the students as possible disciplinary measures. Scope-Crafts said the administrators “failed to engage in any meaningful way regarding the facts of the case.”
“They basically wanted us to admit that our conduct was disruptive, violated university policy, and so on, and apologize for it,” Scope-Crafts said.
“We don’t think we’ve done anything wrong,” he added. “We delivered a letter. That was it. And we were fighting or continuing to fight for what we believe is right.”
The students said they are still waiting for the university to rule on the case.
Scope-Crafts said UT-Austin and colleges across the country have a long history of civil disobedience and peaceful protests, many of which could be considered far more disruptive than the Dec. 8 incident.
“For us to be facing charges including disruptive conduct, unauthorized entry, failure to comply, and unspecified violations of local law for simply reading a letter … It’s honestly an astonishing act of hypocrisy by the university,” he said.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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“Radical Islamist terrorist groups are anti-American, and the infiltration of these dangerous individuals into Texas must be stopped,” said Texas A-G regarding terrorist org. CAIR.
Air traffic controllers lost communication for about 10 minutes with a small Mexican Navy plane carrying a young medical patient and seven others before it crashed off the Texas coast, killing at least five people, Mexico’s president said Tuesday.
Authorities initially believed the plane had landed safely at its destination in Galveston, near Houston, before learning it had gone down Monday afternoon, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. A search-and-resuce operation in waters near Galveston pulled two survivors from the plane’s wreckage, Mexico’s Navy said, while one remained missing.
Four of the eight people aboard were Navy officers and four were civilians, including a child, Mexico’s Navy said. Two of the passengers were affiliated with a nonprofit that helps transport Mexican children with severe burns to a hospital in Galveston.
“My condolences to the families of the sailors who unfortunately died in this accident and to the people who were traveling on board,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press briefing, without elaborating on a possible cause. “What happened is very tragic.”
U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Luke Baker said at least five aboard had died but did not identify which passengers.
The plane crashed Monday afternoon in a bay near the base of the causeway connecting Galveston Island to the mainland. Emergency responders rushed to the scene near the popular beach destination about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Houston.
Sky Decker, a professional yacht captain who lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the crash site, said he jumped in his boat to see if he could help. He picked up two police officers who guided him through thick fog to a nearly submerged plane. Decker jumped into the water and found a badly injured woman trapped beneath chairs and other debris.
“I couldn’t believe. She had maybe 3 inches of air gap to breathe in,” he said. “And there was jet fuel in there mixed with the water, fumes real bad. She was really fighting for her life.”
He said he also pulled out a man seated in front of her who had already died. Both were wearing civilian clothes.
It’s not immediately clear if weather was a factor. The area has been experiencing foggy conditions over the past few days, according to Cameron Batiste, a National Weather Service meteorologist. He said that at about 2:30 p.m. Monday a fog came in that had about a half-mile visibility.
Mexico’s Navy said the plane was helping with a medical mission in coordination with the Michou and Mau Foundation. In a social media post, the foundation said: “We express our deepest solidarity with the families in light of these events. We share their grief with respect and compassion, honoring their memory and reaffirming our commitment to providing humane, sensitive, and dignified care to children with burns.”
Teams from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were at the crash site Monday, the Texas Department of Public Safety said, and a spokesperson for the NTSB said the agency was gathering information about the crash. The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said officials from its dive team, crime scene unit, drone unit and patrol responded the crash.
A small Mexican Navy plane transporting a 1-year-old medical patient along with seven others crashed Monday near Galveston, killing at least two people, officials said.
Emergency officials rescued four people and were searching for two that were inside the aircraft, Mexico’s Navy said in a statement to The Associated Press. Four of the people aboard were Navy officers and four were civilians, according to the Navy. It was not immediately clear which ones were missing and which had been killed.
Two of the people aboard were members from the Michou and Mau Foundation, which is a nonprofit that provides aid to Mexican children who have suffered severe burns.
The crash took place Monday near the base of a causeway near Galveston, along the Texas coast about 50 miles southeast of Houston.
Mexico’s Navy said in a statement that the plane was helping with a medical mission and had an “accident.” It promised to investigate the cause of the crash.
The Navy is helping local authorities with the search and rescue operation, it said in a post on the social media platform X.
Teams from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have arrived at the scene of the crash, the Texas Department of Public Safety said on X.
The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said officials from its dive team, crime scene unit, drone unit and patrol were responding to the crash.
“The incident remains under investigation, and additional information will be released as it becomes available,” the sheriff’s office said in a post on Facebook, adding that the public should avoid the area so emergency responders can work safely.
Galveston is an island that is a popular beach destination.
It’s not immediately clear if weather was a factor. However, the area has been experiencing foggy conditions over the past few days, according to Cameron Batiste, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
He said that at about 2:30 p.m. Monday a fog came in that had about a half-mile visibility. The foggy conditions are expected to persist through Tuesday morning.
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