Political communications senior Lauren Amber was always passionate about advocating for those with disabilities ever since her sister was born with Down syndrome.
Amber found her calling in Student Government’s Disabilities and Inclusion Agency and joined her freshman year. She became the agency’s 2024-25 co-director in her junior year, where she surveyed which University restrooms were compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“I just wanted to gain more connections with people in a way of just helping the UT community,” Amber said. “It’s about impacting the community and getting closer with not just my agency members, but everyone else in different organizations around campus.”
However, when new agency leaders were expected to be appointed for the upcoming academic year in May 2025, Amber and Kate Murphy, a government and rhetoric senior and another co-director for the agency, said they did not hear from the current student president alliance. Later, they discovered the agencies were to be disbanded in August.
Since student body President Hudson Thomas formally announced that the agencies would separate from SG at their first assembly meeting on Sept. 2 for “efficiency,” many of the agencies scrambled to figure out their future.
The former co-directors said they did not find out about the disbanding until alumnus Isaiah Rodriguez, the previous executive alliance’s chief of staff, messaged co-directors about the decision on Aug. 14.
Rodriguez said the new administration’s chief of staff told him of the disbandment after months of asking since the last academic year.
“It would be the chief of staff’s responsibility to make sure that all the agencies are supported with recruitment,” Rodriguez said. “Now that they’re no longer in Student Government, you end up with a situation where you have all these agencies that don’t have new leadership and only have the previous year’s leadership to depend on.”
Several co-directors, including Amber and Murphy, said they wished the administration had better communicated the disbandment to have enough time to prepare to become an independent organization over the summer. Although both said they received emails from the Office of the Dean of Students with guidance on this process, they felt it was too late.
Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.
Dat Duong, former Food Security Agency co-director, said he thought he could leave the agency entrusted for the next generation of students. Now, he said he feels like the former co-directors have been roped back into trying to preserve the work they had done after graduating.
“A lot of these co-directors, they have graduated, they have moved on,” UT alumnus Duong said. “(It is) something that they’ve left behind, trusting that the system is going to continue the work that they have done. That is the expectation, that is longevity and that is how we build continuity in longevity within Student Government.”
Amber said she is holding meetings with former DIA members to keep the agency going, as many of them had greater ambitions in the agency.
“We’re meeting to talk about everything going on, because we do have a lot of members interested in becoming co-directors, becoming leaders, and wanting to know the next step,” Amber said. “We’re just being as transparent as we can with them … sending them the text messages and what’s been going on.”
