Faculty members at West Texas A&M have declared their dissatisfaction with the university’s president, Walter Wendler, in the wake of Wendler’s decision earlier this year to cancel a charity drag show that had been planned on campus, according to a breaking news report by The Texas Tribune.
The event would have benefited The Trevor Project, an organization and hotline dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth.
Faculty senate leaders today (Tuesday, April 25) announced the results of the weeklong no-confidence vote, with faculty members voting by a more than two-to-one margin — 179-82 — to condemn Wendler’s leadership. The vote, reports The Texas Tribune, is “nonbinding and largely symbolic, but faculty hope it sends a message to other university leaders and the Texas A&M University system,” which oversees the school, located in Canyon, Texas.
Some faculty members said that deciding to cancel the drag show was just one example of Wendler’s poor leadership. The resolution last week announcing the no confidence vote accused Wendler of abusing his position as president by “running the university based on his own religious ideology” and of having exhibited “a pattern of divisive, misogynistic, homophobic and non-inclusive rhetoric that stands in stark contrast with the Core Values of the university,” according to the Tribune.
Faculty members also accused Wendler of presenting his personal opinions and religious beliefs as the school’s official policy, even though those opinions and beliefs go against the school’s mission, violate state and federal law, damage West Texas A&M’s reputation and hinder fundraising efforts.
Wendler is already facing a lawsuit filed against him last month by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Express, the Spectrum WT student group and two of Spectrum’s student leaders. The lawsuit alleges Wendler’s action in canceling the drag show is a violation of the First Amendment and a violation of a Texas campus free speech law signed in 2019 by Gov. Greg Abbott.
A spokesperson for West Texas A&M confirmed the vote results, but a spokesperson for the Texas A&M University System declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
— Tammye Nash
