Students posted hundreds of flyers and sticky notes with the message “#NOTOURTEXAS” on buildings, poles and notable landmarks on campus and in surrounding areas around midnight Thursday — but by noon the next day, only a handful remained.
The public demonstration, organized by a movement called #NOTOURTEXAS, follows the University’s Tuesday email announcing the dissolution of the Division of Campus and Community Engagement and a layoff of approximately 60 employees.
“#NOTOURTEXAS is a movement ignited to combat Texas’s implementation of Senate-Bill 17,” a Feb. 27 Instagram statement said. “Their Texas is not our Texas. A state without diversity, equity, and inclusion is a discriminatory state of mind, and not a state of mine.”
An anonymous student said the University’s Tuesday announcement catalyzed the group into action.
“All of us who have been impacted by these decisions decided that we did not want to sit and watch this all happen in front of us without stating our voices against it,” the student said.
The student helped put up flyers last night. They said the group worked together in this effort to push back against the University’s decision in a highly publicized, visual way.
“We wanted it to be something that you cannot ignore,” the student said.
The movement’s student participants put signs on and inside multiple buildings, including the Perry-Castañeda Library, Gregory Gym and several residence halls. They also covered notable landmarks like the Littlefield Fountain and UT Tower and placed sticky notes on the ground along Speedway.
The student said they and two other students put up around 150 to 200 posters last night. Other students each put up similar amounts, if not more — by the end of the night, the student said the group as a whole hung at least 1,000 posters.
The University has historically referred to Section 13 of the University handbook in regard to instances of outdoor signage, according to a University spokesperson. These sections state that signs in spaces occupied by academic and administrative units must be confined to bulletin boards or “other designated locations.”
By 9:30 a.m., most signs on campus had been removed.
The student said that despite these rules, there are typically posters around campus. They said they didn’t believe the group broke any rules.
“If you walk past the McCombs bridge, it’s plastered in different posters,” the student said. “They’re not taking those down. But they took ours down, which I think is very intentional.”
Seeing the campus devoid of flyers the next morning made the student frustrated, they said.
“(It) shows the censorship and policing at the University that is rooted in systemic discrimination (and) that is seeped into the whole institution,” the student said. “Today, we are very clearly feeling (it) with the implementation of SB 17.”
