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Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

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October 4, 2022
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Leaders of frozen student organizations frustrated with Hornslink notification process

0220_frozen_DestinyAlexander
Destiny Alexander

Every fall, student organizations have to complete a “Safety Education Leadership Workshop” to maintain their active status on HornsLink. Some organizations are frustrated with this requirement and said they did not receive adequate notification to attend the workshop until after their status was frozen and they were unable to reserve rooms to meet. 

The Safety Education presentation “connects student organizations to prevention resources, by engaging with bystander intervention and risk reduction practices, in order to shift the campus culture,” according to the event website. All student organizations are required to send their president or primary contact to complete it.

Student organizations such as Har-D-Har Improv had trouble receiving a notification for the required training and were frozen last semester. Government sophomore Tejas Tuppera said he does not think they got an email about the training, but if they did, it got lost among their other HornsLink emails. 


“There’s a lot of HornsLink emails, and I don’t read all of them,” Tuppera said. “It felt like minimal warning with minimal information. We only realized (the training was required) after it was too late.”

Mayuri Raja, a producer for Foot in the Door theater group and a leader for embrACE, a discussion group for asexual and aromantic people, said her organizations had a similar problem.



“For whatever reason that semester leading into my junior year, I didn’t get any emails about it,” computer science senior Raja said. “My email was hooked up to HornsLink, and we had the embrACE email hooked up as well, and we never got any emails about safety training.”

Raja said she did not realize embrACE was frozen until she tried to add members to HornsLink. 

“One of the things that I wish they did was actually tell you if your org is suspended,” Raja said.

While suspended, Har-D-Har Improv, embrACE and Foot in the Door could not reserve campus rooms to hold organization meetings. All three had to occupy empty classrooms to continue regular meetings. 

“Luckily, there’s plenty of unused rooms,” Raja said. “But when you do want to an event that actually has a certain room capacity or you want to advertise before it happens, that stuff is just impossible.”

Jenny Walker, prevention and risk management coordinator in the Office of the Dean of Students, said all messages regarding required workshops and status of organizations go through HornsLink.

Shel Peyton, Beauties and the Beat music director, said she got an email notification for the training and completed it right away but could understand why it can be confusing for other organizations. The email went to her personal email instead of the organization email.

Walker said organizations shouldn’t panic if they become frozen because there are makeup opportunities for the workshops throughout the semester until a certain date.

“We don’t want groups to be frozen,” Walker said. “Our goal is to make sure that all students get this training. The biggest thing is to make sure (student organizations have) their HornsLink up to date and to make sure they have the right officers and the right contact information.”

Raja said having both of her organizations frozen was disheartening.

“At this point like, if my org was to be suspended again, I’m not sure I would even care because it’s not like being suspended has helped,” Raja said.

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About the Contributor
Mikayla Mondragon, Associate Audio Editor
Mikayla is a journalism senior from Corpus Christi, Texas. Currently, she works as the associate audio editor and has previously been a general news reporter. You can usually find her doing color guard with the Longhorn Band or sewing in her free time.
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Leaders of frozen student organizations frustrated with Hornslink notification process