University of Texas at Arlington junior Emmanuel Hernandez thought he might be in trouble when administrators called him into a meeting in February.
Instead, they told him the university was restructuring the Hispanic Serving Institutions Initiatives office.
“I was just shocked,” Hernandez said.
Now Hernandez and a group of students are pushing back against UTA administrators, arguing the decision to move the office under the broader Intercultural Student Engagement Center was made without transparency or meaningful community input.
The initiative was founded in 2023 with a mission to provide access, expand academic quality and foster a sense of community at the university, according to the UTA website. The office supported services including assistance with grant applications and guidance for university units seeking recognition through Examples of Excelencia, a national initiative to recognize programs that accelerate student success.
“We have to deal with ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). We have to deal with our family. We feel scared. We feel like everyone’s attacking us,” Hernandez said. “Now with UTA, we want to get a better education, but then HSI is going to be gone. We’re not going to see our culture anymore.”
The change at UTA comes as state and federal efforts aim to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on college campuses.
Before the restructuring, the office operated under the Office of Talent, Culture and Engagement. Now it falls under Student Affairs.
In March, after the effective change was confirmed to Hernandez, a group of eight students met with administrators and engagement center leadership. Students came with data, a formal presentation and testimonials. Several students cried while recounting how the office had been a first point of belonging on campus.
Five students at the March meeting said administrators cited Texas Senate Bill 17 — a 2023 law restricting DEI programs at public universities — as prompting the move.
UTA moved its LGBTQ+ program under the International Student Engagement Center in 2024 after the new law went into effect. Jesus Canales, an advertising and public relations senior, said that the program effectively disappeared after the move, and he sees it as a warning for what could happen to Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives, often called HSI Initiatives.
“When departments go underneath (the student center), they don’t survive,” said Canales.
In a statement, UTA spokesperson Jeff Caplan said the change to the Hispanic Serving Institutions Initiatives office was made to better align it with the university’s student-facing services. The statement did not directly reference SB 17.
“Many HSI Initiatives-related activities are focused on student engagement, academic success and family outreach,” Caplan wrote. “Placing the program within Student Affairs allows these efforts to be more closely integrated with the university’s existing programs.”
Caplan did not address why no public announcement was made or which specific policies prompted the restructuring.
What is an HSI?
Thaiss Loaeza has advocated for Hispanic students since 2019. She graduated in 2023 and returned to UTA a year later for her master’s degree in social work because she said progress finally felt real.
When she arrived on campus nearly seven years ago, she noticed a gap in services for Hispanic students. While noting diversity and seeing people who looked like her on campus, Loaeza didn’t see any visible programming or resources for such students.
That concerned her because she knew UTA was a Hispanic Serving Institution, a designation it earned in 2014. Federal law defines such schools as colleges or universities where at least 25% of undergraduate enrollment is Hispanic.
UTA had 4,125 Hispanic undergraduate students in 2014, making up 25% of enrollment. By 2024, that number more than doubled to 8,865. Now, Hispanic students make up 34.7% of the school’s total student enrollment, according to university data.
In 2022, UTA was one of six Texas schools that earned national recognition for strategies, practices and measurable goals that had a positive impact on Latinos and all students. Excelencia in Education later recertified UTA with its national seal for such efforts in 2025.
University officials confirmed that grant-related functions previously associated with the HSI Initiatives office will now be administered through separate university offices, citing compliance with “evolving federal and state policies.”
The restructuring at UTA comes amid a shifting federal landscape for Hispanic Serving Institutions nationwide.
In September, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would end discretionary grant programs for minority-serving institutions, including HSIs, asserting the programs amounted to unconstitutional race-based discrimination.
In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to require contractors and funding recipients to certify they would not engage in what the administration defines as racially discriminatory DEI activities. Institutions in violation risk losing federal funding.
Many schools nationwide have ended DEI-related programs or shifted them to fall under larger student engagement efforts.
However, the lack of visibility was the central problem Loaeza and other student leaders were trying to solve when advocating for the office.
“A lot of what people would tell me was, ‘We knew there were Hispanic students, we just didn’t know where to find them,’” said Loaeza, who co-founded UTA’s student-led Hispanic Leadership Council.
The impact
María Yareli Delgado was the first person to make Danielle Mares, a junior transfer student, feel welcomed at UTA.
After losing several relatives, Mares connected with Delgado, the HSI Initiatives’ inaugural senior director, during a Dia de los Muertos event hosted by the office. She said that mentorship went beyond event programming.
“I remember I felt so incredibly lost. I had the worst first year at UTA. I struggled so much to acclimate to the UTA lifestyle,” Mares recalled. “The only person that I found on campus was Dr. Delgado.”
Delgado did not respond to a request for comment.
Maritza Perez, a junior marketing major with a minor in Mexican American studies, said the lack of Hispanic representation in faculty and administration at UTA makes the office feel even more essential.
In 2024, 42 out of 628 tenured or on tenured track faculty were Hispanic, according to federal data.
“We’re not receiving that representation in administration, in faculty, in professors,” Perez said. “Because of people like HSI, we can have that space on campus.”
In the March meeting, Mares said administrators emphasized to students that the political landscape had changed.
“But the demographics have not,” Mares said in response.
Loaeza was a student when the LGBTQ+ program was active. She watched it move to the university’s intercultural center. Now she is watching the same changes play out with the HSI Initiatives office.
Students continue to meet with administrators in smaller groups, while they spread the word on campus about the change.
“It took a lot to get to where it is now,” Loaeza said. “I hope that doesn’t dissolve.”
Nicole Williams Quezada is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at nicole.williams@fortworthreport.org
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2026/04/07/uta-students-question-future-of-hispanic-focused-office-after-department-move/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Arlington Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://fortworthreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=477675&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://fortworthreport.org/2026/04/07/uta-students-question-future-of-hispanic-focused-office-after-department-move/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/fortworthreport.org/p.js”></script>
