Drag queens have become as commonplace as football and protesters on U.S. college campuses, but they’re running into resistance in red states like Oklahoma.
On a mission to expose drag-related spending at the University of Oklahoma is the Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs, which unveiled last week a contract showing drag performer Plasma was paid $11,500 for an October show at the McCasland Field House during homecoming week.
The right-tilting think tank previously disclosed that the university spent at least $56,000 on three separate drag events in 2023, including $18,000 for a performance by Yvie Oddly, who won Season 11 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
“Taxpayers in this red state need to know what their blue universities are up to, especially when the ‘mainstream’ media won’t tell them,” Brandon Dutcher, the council’s senior vice president for public affairs, told The Washington Times.
The university has hardly made its annual Crimson & Queens drag show a secret. The OU website boasts that the event has “created a long-lasting legacy that will continue to build an affirming and welcoming environment for the campus community.”
“Crimson & Queens is one of OU’s most popular events and has quickly become one of the largest collegiate drag shows in the United States with more than 4,500 people in attendance over the past 7 years,” said a page dedicated to Crimson & Queens on the OU Student Life website.
OU is hardly an outlier.
It would be difficult to find a major U.S. university in 2025 that doesn’t host a drag-related event, spurred by the popularity of the long-running RuPaul series and rise of LGBTQ activism on campus.
Drag queens at the college level have yet to ignite the same level of outrage as those at K-12 schools or children’s library story hours, given that the target audience is over 18.
At the same time, their rapid rise has raised questions about whether academia’s best and highest purpose is to welcome male performers known for their bawdy humor, sexualized women’s attire, and exaggerated female physical characteristics.
But at least one university has said no.
West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a student-sponsored drag show in 2023, calling such performances “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.”
The student group Spectrum WT slapped him with a First Amendment lawsuit, but a District Court judge ruled in Mr. Wendler’s favor. The case was argued in April before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is awaiting a decision.
No such lawsuit looms on the horizon at the University of Oklahoma, which has staunchly defended the free-speech rights of the student group sponsoring Crimson & Queens, a pun off the school athletic teams’ colors of crimson and cream.
“This event is one of many organized by our more than 500 student groups, each of which determines how to allocate its funds for activities that reflect their interests,” the university told The Washington Times.
“As a university, we respect and uphold our students’ constitutional rights, including their rights to freedom of speech and expression, and we cannot—and do not—interfere with those rights,” the school said.
The 2024 contract for Plasma’s performance is between the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents and the Warner Talent Agency, but the contract also states that the Queer Student Association “will be utilizing its funds to pay for this event.”
“It’s also important to clarify that events like this are not funded with state dollars,” said the university. “Instead this was financed by student fees, which are designated for student activities and managed independently by student organizations.”
However, the Council said that is no better.
“Mandatory student fees paid for the events, regardless of whether students supported drag-queen shows,” the group said.
The OU website lists other Crimson & Queens sponsors, including the Student Government Association; the OU Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; the OU Weitzenhoffer School of Musical Theatre; the OU LGBTQ Alumni Association, and soft-drink giant Coca-Cola.
“We remain committed to protecting our students’ constitutional rights and will not compromise those rights,” the university said.
Mr. Dutcher was skeptical, saying the university’s defense of free speech is selective.
He cited a 2015 case in which two fraternity members were expelled for a racist chant. In 2019, a law professor lost two administrative posts over a book on Catholicism expressing what the student newspaper called “homophobic, sexist views.”
“Though OU’s professed commitment to constitutional rights is laudable, curiously it doesn’t extend to all OU students or professors,” said Mr. Dutcher. “In any case, OCPA’s journalism arm will continue to report on these things.”
Drag shows at colleges are so popular that at least one company, Drag Queen Entertainment, specifically markets to universities with both “entertainment and educational formats,” including a two-hour presentation called Drag 101.
In July, San Francisco’s inaugural “drag laureate” D’Arcy Drollinger performed and lectured at a workshop on “allyship, inclusivity, and support for the LGBTQ+ community” at the University of California San Francisco, as flagged by Campus Reform.
Some colleges even have drag queens on staff. Harris Kornstein, whose drag name is Lil Miss Hot Mess, is on leave from his job as an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, while the faculty at Tufts University in Massachusetts includes associate professor Kareem Khubchandani, also known as LaWhore Vagistan.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.