For Alyssa Gonzales, a highlight of her freshman year at South Dakota State University was attending a campus drag show.
Hosted by South Dakota State’s Gender and Sexualities Alliance, an LGBTQ student group, the show featured three artists in makeup and costumes waltzing through dance numbers and gymnastic feats. “Drag” refers to the performance of exaggerated masculinity or femininity, often as a form of entertainment; it’s an LGBTQ tradition that advocates say promotes queer self-expression and gender experimentation.
“It’s just amazing seeing how these people fully dressed-up do amazing stunts, and how they interact with the audience,” Gonzales, now a rising junior and the alliance’s president, told The Chronicle. “They make a very positive and comforting safe space for a lot of people.”
South Dakota’s chief executive, however, would like to see the performances gone from the state’s public colleges.
Last month, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, wrote a letter to the South Dakota Board of Regents demanding that it ban drag shows on college campuses. The board oversees the state’s six public colleges.
The board hasn’t yet acted on Noem’s demand. But what they decide to do could have consequences for state leaders who oppose drag on campus; for LGBTQ students who embrace the art; and for colleges trying to sort through it all.
These drag-ban bills can be an instrument to harass LGBTQIA people. It gives people the audacity to harass our community.
In recent months, campus drag shows have become a frequent target of conservative politicians across the country.
Devon Ojeda, a senior national organizer with the National Center for Transgender Equality, said such efforts could affect not just drag shows, but also pride events where people may dress outside of the gender binary. “These drag-ban bills can be an instrument to harass LGBTQIA people,” Ojeda said. “It gives people the audacity to harass our community.”
The fight over drag shows is quickly moving into the courts. The president of West Texas A&M University canceled a student drag show in March, saying that such performances were offensive toward women. An LGBTQ student organization sued the president, Walter Wendler, and other officials at the public university. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Tennessee ruled on June 2 that a state law restricting public drag performances violated the First Amendment.
At a time when LGBTQ rights are mired in political conflict, college leaders must proceed carefully.
Public colleges “have to walk a very careful line to communicate their concerns about these kinds of intrusions on academic freedom and institutional autonomy,” said Steven Bloom, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, “while preserving their working relationships with policymakers.”
‘None of Us Are Happy’
South Dakota State’s spring 2022 drag show, which so inspired Alyssa Gonzalez, went off without a hitch. Last fall’s rendition caused a lot more fuss.
The Gender and Sexualities Alliance billed the performance as “kid-friendly” and encouraged attendees to tip performers. Ahead of the event, riled conservative lawmakers wrote to South Dakota State’s president, Barry H. Dunn, and asked if taxpayer money was being used for the show. Dunn clarified that the alliance, a registered student organization, was sponsoring the event, not the university itself.
The show went off without incident, though the alliance increased security. “We had record turnout, there were no security issues,” the vice president of the group, Lindsay Tull, told The Chronicle. “It was a really good night.”
Should taxpayers be expected to provide resources to host any event students want on campus?
Still, the system’s governing board was driven to act. In December, the Board of Regents asked college presidents to stop allowing kids at events hosted by student organizations while the board reviewed student-activity policies.
“We respect the First Amendment, but none of us are happy about children being encouraged to participate in this event on a university campus,” the board’s president said in a news release. An interim policy was quickly put in place that allowed kid-friendly events to continue, with board approval.
A final “minors on campus” policy was approved in May. Under the new rules, programs involving minors may not include “specific sexual activities,” “obscene live conduct,” or anything else that meets the legal definition of “harmful to minors.”
Meanwhile, Republican state lawmakers introduced two bills this spring to prohibit state colleges from funding or sponsoring drag shows.
“Should taxpayers be expected to provide resources to host any event students want on campus?” Rep. Chris Karr, who sponsored one of the bills, asked a House committee in February. “That is why I took this bill further. It isn’t just about SDSU, we are talking about taxpayer resources.” Both bills eventually failed.
Now, the governor has waded into the debate.
Noem’s call to ban drag shows was part of a list of demands to the Board of Regents. She also asked the board to remove references to preferred pronouns in campus materials and to require American history and government courses for graduation. And she set up a whistleblower hotline for people to report complaints about the state’s colleges and universities.
A spokesman for South Dakota State University referred The Chronicle to the Board of Regents; a spokeswoman for the board said it was still reviewing Noem’s letter. Noem’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
What Counts as Free Speech?
The debate over drag shows also intersects with higher ed’s longstanding conversations about campus free speech.
In her May letter referencing drag shows, Noem directed public colleges to protect free speech. It’s not the first time she’s talked about campus expression.
Since she became governor in 2019, Noem has made it a priority to reduce suspected liberal influence on college campuses — with the stated goal of promoting free speech. She has railed against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in higher education and signed legislation to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Additionally:
- In March 2019, Noem signed into law a bill ordering colleges to promote “intellectual diversity.”
- In July 2021, she signed an executive order barring the South Dakota Department of Education from applying for federal grants that have links to critical race theory.
- In May 2021, Noem wrote a letter to South Dakota’s Board of Regents asking that it strongly consider getting rid of campus diversity offices. The following January , the board indeed did away with the offices and replaced them with “opportunity centers.”
- In March 2022, Noem signed into law a bill ordering colleges to discontinue mandatory training and orientation programs that discuss “divisive concepts” related to race, gender, and sex.
In her most recent letter, Noem assailed “gender theory,” which she said has been “rebranded and accepted as truth across the nation.” (The Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research defines “gender theory” as the “study of what is understood as masculine and/or feminine and/or queer behavior in any given context, community, society, or field of study.”)
Noem also suggested that the First Amendment shouldn’t protect the promotion of gender theory: “These theories should be openly debated in college classrooms, but not celebrated through public performances on taxpayer-owned property at taxpayer-funded schools.” She denied that embracing particular standards of “behavior and decency” is equivalent to suppressing speech.
But to LGBTQ activists and free-speech advocates, that’s exactly what those standards would do.
“We do have the right to express ourselves, whether that be through words or actions,” Gonzales, the South Dakota State student leader, said. “Taking that away limits expressing ourselves, both for the students and event-goers who go to drag shows and for the drag artists themselves.”
Zach Greenberg, a senior program officer for campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE, told The Chronicle that drag shows are expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. “Students have the right to put forth expressive events, even if those events are hateful, inflammatory, or offensive,” Greenberg said.
If the South Dakota Board of Regents agrees to Noem’s demand to bar campus drag shows, litigation will likely follow, Greenberg said. He urged public institutions to resist pressure from state officials to limit free expression. Banning drag shows on campus “sends the message that some viewpoints are not OK,” Greenberg said.
At South Dakota State, Gonzales said she doesn’t want other people to be denied the opportunity to see a drag show for the first time. But if the student group is told to close the curtains, she said, the club would survive.
“We would find other ways to have fun,” she said. “But it’s just one of our biggest things that everyone looks forward to every year.”