AUSTIN, Texas — As protests at the University of Texas at Austin have gained national attention, some students admit that the tension on campus is affecting their mental health and the celebrations of their senior year.
UT Austin senior Tyler Winter said he had an unusual freshman year navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, seeing the protests and arrests unfold on campus is adding stress onto his senior year.
"Coming from high school, I had a weird, very weird graduation experience – masked, outside," Winter said. "And then coming here, freshman year, everything was closed. Now, there's a ton of protests, and it kind of takes away ... it becomes very divisive with a lot of my friends, with myself, with my family."
UT has added patrols on campus, which is distracting to students like sophomore Kevin Barcenas.
"I feel like the police presence has been a lot more disruptive than the actual protests themselves," Barcenas said. "Definitely felt among my fellow classmates. We've talked about how we feel conflicted, where we should be studying, or we have classes to study for, but there's like greater, larger things going on in the world."
UT has called the events of the past week a "disruption" – but sophomore Georgia Horton disagrees.
"I think that if someone doesn't want to be disrupted, I don't think they're going to be disrupted," Horton said.
Winter can't help but believe these should be happier times, considering the culmination of all the seniors' hard work,.
"It's supposed to be a time everybody's coming together, being happy, taking pictures together, popping champagne bottles in the fountain. And I can't do that very well because there's some disruptions going on," Winter said. "I would rather spend the time with friends and kind of saying goodbye to people before I move away, before my friends move away."
A spokesperson for the university said graduation is moving forward as planned, but would not go into details about security protocols.