"The Eyes of Texas is non-negotiable," wrote another graduate who said they’ve had season tickets since 1990 and whose name was redacted by the university. Around 75 people in emails explicitly threatened to stop supporting the school financially, calling on the university to take a heavier hand with students and athletes they believed were disrespecting university tradition by protesting it. Hartzell had already publicly stated the university would keep the song, but hundreds of emails obtained through public records requests show that decision didn’t quell the furor among some of the most ardent supporters of "The Eyes."įrom June to late October, over 70% of the nearly 300 people who emailed Hartzell’s office about "The Eyes" demanded the school keep playing it.
"Has everyone become oblivious of who supports athletics?" His name was redacted by UT-Austin, citing open records laws that protect certain donor identities.
This could very easily be rescinded if things don’t drastically change around here," wrote one donor in October. "My wife and I have given an endowment in excess of $1 million to athletics. Illustration by Emily Albracht for the Texas Tribune Lee.Įmail sent to UT-Austin obtained in a public records request. (Ehlinger later said he was only lingering alone on the field to talk with coaches.) The song - played to the tune of "I’ve been working on the railroad" - was historically performed at campus minstrel shows, and the title is linked to a saying from Confederate Army Commander Robert E. The rest of the team, which typically stays to sing the song with fans at the end of games, had retreated from the field.įor many University of Texas at Austin students who had spent months protesting and petitioning the school to get rid of "The Eyes of Texas," it was gutting to see the student leader seemingly taking a stand. The bruising loss was quickly overshadowed when then-Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger stood alone on the field for the playing of the university’s alma mater song, "The Eyes of Texas," a postgame tradition. The Texas Longhorns had just lost to rival Oklahoma for the third time in a row - this time after quadruple overtime. The school's own report proved it (despite them saying to the contrary).Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. The problem is the report, which the authors seem to want to use as a piece of vindication for the song (despite them saying to the contrary), prove what people who object to the song have been saying all along. Wealthy donors want it to stay, too, and some of them have expressed their Pleistocene-like views in letters to the school. The school did make changes including renaming some buildings and erecting a statue honoring the first Black football letterman.īut the song has stayed and the administration says it won't be going anywhere. The report notes this saying that Floyd's death in May of 2020 caused "protests around the country and world” and led to Texas athletes examining the school's racial history, including the song. That's because of the emergence of a post-Floyd world where athletes are taking firmer stands on social justice issues. The song, and the recent examination of it by University of Texas athletes following the killing of George Floyd, has become a national issue. In some ways, all of this comes down to a highly simple algorithm: If you needed a report to find out if a song's origins had racist intent, it probably had racist intent. If you cannot see that a minstrel show is racist, and the song's origins emanate from that, really nothing you say after that should be taken seriously. Saying that a song tied to a minstrel show with white people wearing blackface has no racist intent, is the report equivalent of "some of my best friends are Black." This is where the report completely invalidates itself and isn't worth the megabytes it's written on. In other words, they are blaming the culture that produced the song, but not the song itself, which is a twisty piece of gymnastic cognitive dissonance that Simone Biles would adore. “However, it is similarly clear that the cultural milieu that produced it was.” “The research leads us to surmise that intent of the ‘Eyes of Texas’ was not overtly racist,” the report says.
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