Texas Politician Mad That There Wasn’t Enough White People In UT Football Game Photo

Dhairya Gupta appears in the bottom right of the frame in a burnt orange T-shirt, his right arm extended in the Hook 'em Horns sign. Around him, other University of Texas students pack the shot, celebrating a touchdown scored in the final minute against Ohio State. The image is a screenshot from a 17-second vertical video that Texas Athletics posted to its official accounts on Saturday evening, September 12, 2026, after the Longhorns won at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin.

By Sunday, that still sat inside a post by Bo French on X. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

French is the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, the agency that regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. He secured the nomination by narrowly defeating incumbent Jim Wright in a runoff after the March 2026 primary, where French received 31.75 percent to Wright’s 32.1 percent. In further posts he wrote that Americans are being displaced by foreigners. He referred to the students in the picture as foreigners. He said the university was filled with foreign nationals and leftists and argued that the school has prioritized foreign students and workers. He wrote that he wept for Texas families who cannot get into UT because the university prioritizes foreigners over Texans.

Replies spread quickly. Comments included “Bollywood University,” “I didn’t know the stadium was in India,” and “The America we grew up in no longer exists.” On Monday, French defended the posts on a conservative radio talk show and did not retract them. He said voters he talks to want institutions returned to serving the interests of citizens.

Gupta, a senior at the university and one of the students visible in the frame, said he is used to racist remarks online but found it another matter to see them from a candidate for statewide office. “When I look at that picture, I don’t see a problem,” he told the Texas Tribune. He told the Dallas Morning News he is a naturalized citizen. The citizenship status of everyone else in the photo is not known.

Students in that part of the section said the grouping happened partly by chance. Like everyone else heading for the student seats, they had waited many hours in line in the heat before the Ohio State game and then run for the closest spots to the field when the gates opened. “If you were at the game, you know that picture is taken extremely out of context,” Moyeen said. She called it unprofessional for someone in public office to lift the image and bend it to fit an agenda about race.

Lisa Varghese, another sophomore seated in the same section, said the turn on social media left her stunned. “To complain about skin color and to complain about other people ‘taking over’ UT Austin and how disappointing that is is just disgusting,” she said. She said football is supposed to be something people come together to celebrate. Moyeen said hostile posts under the original video had already become familiar enough that she first tried to ignore them. French’s intervention changed that. “There will always be racist people out there who feel OK with hiding behind a screen and commenting things about people that they don’t know, but for a politician running for a public office to come out and say those same hateful things just takes it to a whole different level that you truly can’t ignore anymore,” she said.

The enrollment figures run against the claim that the campus has been handed to foreign students. For the 2025-26 school year, 80.5 percent of UT students were Texas residents, 10.2 percent came from other U.S. states, and 9.3 percent were international. Fall 2025 total enrollment reached 55,000, including 5,140 international students. International students made up 4.3 percent of undergraduates.

State law requires 90 percent of each freshman class to be Texas residents. The university automatically admits the top 5 percent of every Texas high school graduating class; 75 percent of the freshman class enters through that route. The remaining seats are filled by a holistic review of grades, activities, and essays. UT has been barred from considering race in admissions since the 2023 Supreme Court decision. Among degree-seeking undergraduates, Asian students account for about 26 percent, up from 20 percent a decade earlier. White students account for about 29 percent, down from 44 percent over the same span. University-wide figures for 2024-25 put white students at roughly 31.5 percent, Hispanic students at about 25.5 percent, and Asian students at about 22.4 percent. The university reports race and ethnicity separately from international status, so most students counted as Asian are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

On Monday night, about a day after French’s post, Kevin Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, issued a statement thanking the students who filled the stands. “When I stood on the sidelines at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night and looked up at the seats filled with incredible fans, I saw Longhorns,” Eltife said. He said the same view meets him at graduation and anytime he is on campus, and that he is proud to celebrate all Longhorn students. UT President Jim Davis added a follow-up post calling the students exceptional and stating that all of them are Longhorns.

Criticism also came from elected officials in both parties. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn called the episode a path to ruin for a party. “This is how great political parties self-destruct,” Cornyn said. “Sad.” Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows said the post had gone too far. “You can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity,” Burrows said. “This post has crossed the line.” Republican state Rep. Jared Patterson called the post racist and wrong. Democratic state Rep. Vikki Goodwin condemned it as a racist post.

The Texas Longhorns football program represents the University of Texas at Austin in the Southeastern Conference and plays its home games at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. The Saturday win over Ohio State had packed the student section with fans who had waited out the heat for seats near the field. Gupta said he was troubled by how many people publicly agreed with French, and that the Longhorns who spoke up for the students in the photo brought a smile to his face. In the frame that started it, his arm is still raised in the Hook ’em sign.