FEATURED
‘This is worse than throwing money down a drain,’ critic says
Florida State University’s Pride Student Union requested more than $58,000 this year to fund endeavors such as drag shows and a “gender-affirming clothing closet,” according to public records obtained exclusively by The College Fix.
The group plans to allocate $5,300 of this budget for professional and amateur drag shows, while $20,000 will go toward sponsoring students to attend a national LGBTQ conference called Creating Change.
Additional allocations include $5,000 for a “gender-affirming clothing closet,” with another $2,000 allocated for a “sexual health pantry.”
The closet “offers free binders, packers, tucking panties, and TransTape” to students who request them, according to an Instagram post from the group.
The pantry offers free Plan B, pregnancy tests, condoms, and more, according to another Instagram post.
During the 2025-26 academic year, FSU’s Pride Student Union received and spent $43,040. It requests a 36 percent increase this year for a total budget of $58,850.
“It should absolutely be rejected,” American Principles Project spokesperson Anna Poff told The College Fix.
When asked about the expenses, Poff said, “No one is gaining from this – not the students involved in the union, not those forced to subsidize it.”
“In fact, this is worse than throwing money down a drain. $43,000 could change someone’s life. Instead, it’s being used in one of the most irresponsible ways imaginable,” Poff said.
Poff also spoke about the ideology this money will promote, saying, “What is gained is more indoctrination into an inherently harmful ideology and more harm to the people involved.”
“It’s sickening to see that a student group might receive a large budget increase while young college students, their families, and taxpayers are drowning in debt,” Poff said.
“This is a gross use of funding…To subsidize drag shows, a sex health pantry, and closets built to help people masquerade as something they are not,” Poff told The Fix.
Poff said that those being expected and forced to pay for these programs “should be outraged at this misuse of their hard-earned money.”
Heritage Foundation Policy Analyst Madison Marino Doan told The College Fix that this kind of funding is not uncommon.
“Student activity fees often go toward student clubs or unions whose views are controversial,” she said.
Doan referenced a 2000 Supreme Court decision, which held that “mandatory student activity fees may fund speech a student opposes, as long as the money is allocated in a viewpoint-neutral way.”
“Even so,” Doan said, “colleges and universities can give students a way to opt out of supporting groups they find objectionable.”
Doan also mentioned a recent report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which found that “the University of Minnesota established a process for students to receive refunds associated with funding a particular student group.”
“These approaches would give students meaningful choices when organizations use mandatory fees to promote activities that conflict with their values,” Doan said.
Doan also said she hopes “to see student activity fees support events that foster viewpoint diversity rather than primarily funding identity-based student groups.”
Student activity fees should be put towards programs that “encourage civil discourse and expose students to a wider range of perspectives,” she said.
She argued that this could potentially “help create a campus climate in which students feel more comfortable expressing and debating different viewpoints,” referencing a recent survey from the Knight Foundation that found two in three students self-censor during classroom discussions.
The College Fix contacted Florida State University, the FSU Pride Student Union, and the FSU Student Government Association for more information on the funding. The Fix received no responses.
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