Oh look, Texas Tech is making national headlines again, and for once, it doesn’t involve couch-burning or a sports scandal. This Thursday, student groups Raiders Against Censorship and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas are trading in their standard university gear for straight-up Victorian mourning attire. They are staging a full-blown, horse-drawn mock funeral on campus to mourn the “death of academic freedom.” They’ve got an urn, a stack of books, black veils, and a scheduled press conference they are calling a “eulogy.” Because nothing says “higher education” quite like needing a permit for a theatrical hearse just to point out that your curriculum is being gutted by politicians.
Why the sudden urge to play dress-up in the West Texas heat? Because Chancellor Brandon Creighton—a former state senator who apparently wants to run Tech like a strict 1950s boarding school—just dropped the hammer on anything remotely resembling modern social science. Creighton recently axed all academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity. He even went so far as to ban graduate students from writing dissertations or theses on these topics, resulting in hundreds of forced course modifications. Apparently, the administration believes that if we just pretend LGBTQ+ people don’t exist in textbooks, the Lubbock wind will magically stop blowing dust into everyone’s eyes.
Creighton defended this intellectual purge in a letter, claiming it ensures classes are “rigorous” and “directly tied to preparing students for success in a 21st-century workforce.” Because nothing screams “future-ready global competitor” like a diploma from a university that legally forbids you from researching basic human demographics. But hey, Creighton is a seasoned pro at this; he’s the same guy who authored the state’s DEI ban and worked hard to limit faculty influence on campus decision-making. Who needs qualified professors guiding academic research when you have a career politician telling you exactly what you’re allowed to think?
At this rate, if the Board of Regents keeps purifying the campus of any topic more complex than a tractor manual, the only “rigorous” major left at Texas Tech will be a Bachelor of Science in Nodding Appreciatively at Oil Derricks.
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