FIERCE

College President Loses No-Confidence Vote After Canceling Drag Show

The charity event was dropped, he said, because such performances are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.”

West Texas A&M President Walter Wendler lost a bruising no-confidence vote on Tuesday as faculty members expressed their outrage over his canceling of a campus charity drag show last month. The faculty senate president announced that 179 staff voted to say they’d lost confidence in Wendler compared with 82 who voted to support him, according to the Texas Tribune. The drag show, which had been arranged to benefit a nonprofit that aims to reduce suicides in the LGBTQ community called The Trevor Project, was canceled by Wendler on the grounds that such shows are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” Announcing the vote of no confidence last week, faculty senate leaders said concerns about Wendler went beyond the cancellation and included broader complaints of him imposing his religious ideology on the school. The vote is largely symbolic and will not remove Wendler from his role.