Something's A-Foot

Students report a mysterious photographer soliciting feet pictures around Lot D

DRAG CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 if a drag queen can be in it then anyone can be in it. So that’s why I’m here.” not right what’s going on here, especially combining it with perverted readings of the Bible.”

Sebyul Baik, a literature senior and vice president of the Synergy Wesley Foundation, said that the group had concerns about the show because of recent protests at drag events. In addition, Simmons had received negative press online, as they were featured on conservative podcaster Matt Walsh’s show on Oct. 11. Walsh criticized the presence of drag queens in Christian services, shared one of Simmons’ performances of slam poetry and referred to their ideas as “cheap blasphemy” and “heretical nonsense.” Wesley had originally planned to hold the drag show at Northside but moved it last minute due to safety concerns.

“The Matt Walsh show, they have a lot of listeners, and that happening the day before our event,” Baik said. “We were really worried about the possible negative press of the name being more recognizable. And we already weren't really advertising the event online, but just to be extra safe, we decided to move it farther inwards toward campus to SU green. The last-second change was only made possible because of support from the Gender Center."

Winser-John said that he took Randle aside in order to prevent either crowd members or Randle from getting hurt and to stop any potential conflict. Once he realized what Randle’s opinions were of the event, Winser-John said he continued to try to defuse the situation so the event could continue without interruption.

“My efforts to defuse the situation were not being respected or honored,”

Winser-John said. “And campus police were called by somebody, not myself, but I did ask the student protester several times ‘I don’t want you to be detained, I don’t want that for you.’ He was asking me and everyone around him to be detained, which I told him I did not want to happen. I felt like this could be solved in a better manner than that.”

After campus police arrived, officers continued to talk with Randle alongside Winser-John, but ultimately detained him away from the main event area. After the event, ODEI Communications Manager Alexandra Pirkle said that while students are entitled to their opinions, there is a line between behavior that is acceptable and behavior that is not.

An unknown photographer harassed students on campus and solicited feet pictures.

The Mercury was in contact with three confirmed students and others who described “Nick”—a 5-foot-7 Caucasian man with a skateboard—who approached them around campus. In each encounter, students said that Nick claimed he was a photographer and asked if they wanted to take photos. The encounter eventually culminated in Nick asking them to take off their shoes, with which one student complied. Afterwards Nick obtained the victims’ phone numbers. UTD PD confirmed it is are looking for Nick.

Arianna Meisetschlaeger, a junior in ATEC, encountered Nick in August 2022. Meisetschlaeger said that Nick approached her in the afternoon near campus. Nick claimed that he was not a student at UTD, but was staying with a friend at Northside. He then asked if she would like to take photos, un- der the guise of practicing photography as a hobby. Meisetschlaeger said that the encounter seemed like a normal photo shoot until he asked if he could take photos of her feet, at which point she said no.

“We took a bunch of photos,” Meisetschlaeger said. “I was very careful to make sure he didn't have me in any compromising positions or anything. But it was very casual, and he seemed to care that I was comfortable. But then he asked me if I could take my shoes off. And I was like, ‘why?’ And he said, ‘I just wanna get some photos of your bare feet’ or something. And he saw that I was clearly not gonna let him do that.”

A student who did not wish to be named for fear of retaliation described her encounter with Nick in late September. He approached her in a parking lot under the guise of asking for directions, told her he was a photographer and asked if she wanted to do a photoshoot. The two moved to a more secluded area of campus, where the photoshoot proceeded normally, until Nick asked her to take her shoes off.

“I had socks on so I was like, sure, why not,” she said. “I guess I'll trust his creative vision. So I took my shoes off and then he was taking more pictures and then he reached over and was like, ‘Oh, can we take your socks off?’ And he was reaching over to take them off and I was like, ‘Oh, I got it, it's fine.’ I took them off. And then he started touching my feet.”

The student described complying with Nick’s requests out of fear of retaliation.

“He was taller than me, and I didn't know him, so I wasn't gonna all of a sudden start being rude to him and just be like, ‘No, get away.’ I was like, 'Okay, whatever. Weird.' And he was taking a video, and so I was just trying to play it cool. And then after he was done touching my feet, he was like, ‘Oh, I have a YouTube channel where I get videos of people reacting to weird stuff.’ And I was like, ‘okay, yeah, just blur my face in the video.’ ”

Baik said that while organizers were nervous at the start of the event, they became more comfortable until the end of the show, when Randle’s interruption began. Baik said that they tried to guide the audience’s attention away from Randle and keep the event moving.

“From the leadership perspective of things, I think that we handled it really well, and I was really surprised at how well our whole team dealt with things,” Baik said. “We tried really hard to redirect the energy from being super angry or from engaging with him much. We tried not to let people yell back too much, we tried to keep the mood light, kept going on with the show. Chanted, did fun things, kept cheering.”

Randle and other students came to watch the event after hearing Christian music. After listening to the sermon and seeing the subsequent drag show, Randle walked to where the performers were preparing to dance and spoke to the crowd.

“I go in the middle of the event and I say, ‘This is not Christ-like,’” Randle said. “‘This is disordered, perverted, it’s

“When it crosses that line into causing harm, that’s when intervention is required,” Pirkle said. “When the opinions exist on their own, that’s a totally separate story. But it’s when that line is crossed into being, in a way, inflicted on another person, that’s when action needs to be taken, in our view.”

Simmons and the other XAI drag performers finished the show after the interruption, and Simmons said they danced to show that they were ultimately unaffected.

“There’s nothing people say that is new,” Simmons said. “Queer folks have heard it all. It’s the air we breathe, the society we live in. So, what better way to celebrate, then, by dancing? In the queer community, there’s such an emphasis on dancing, on enjoyment and on just pure joy. And so that’s the heart of drag for me, and that’s what I hope to do in churches. And that’s what we’re doing with the protesters here. No matter what anyone says, we’re gonna be ourselves and we’re gonna have fun while doing it too. I believe that the divine is a being that is joy-filled and loves to dance, so why not emulate that?”