This is almost a non-story, but since I stumbled across it, and it takes place at my alma mater, and I possessed intimate knowledge of Objectivism during my college days, I thought I’d mention it.
Basically, UT has money available for chartered student groups, the UT Objectivist group applied for money to host a debate, and the UT Events board turned them down without telling them why.
UT Objectivism Society applied for funding support from the student-led Events CoSponsorship Board (ECB) for a planned on-campus debate. Titled “Inequality: Should We Care?,” the discussion was set to feature Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and James K. Galbraith, a UT professor and director of the University of Texas Inequality Project. ECB itself is funded wholly by student activity fees, to the tune of $70,000 per year—all of which is spent supporting the programming of various student organizations. The UT Objectivism Society applied for $1,920.64 in funding to support the event…In March 22, however, ECB emailed UT Objectivism Society president Jonathan Divin, informing him that ECB “is unable to fund UT objectivism Society at this time.” Divin responded, asking if ECB could provide any explanation as to why the group’s request for funding was denied. Troublingly, ECB replied only: “Unfortunately, ECB is unable to disclose any information regarding the deliberation process whether or not an event was funded.”
Enter the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has frequently taken up first amendment and equal rights causes on campus. So they sent a letter, UT went “Yeah, we should be more transparent,” then said the reason the Objectivists were denied money was because the fund was already out of money. And they promised to do better.
Assuming UT follows through, we’ll count that as a tiny win for fairness and transparency…