Stanford University is awarding five times as much money to a campus drag troupe as to an undergraduate veterans association after students overwhelmingly approved the grants in a campus-wide vote.
The grants, which are funded by student dues, also include $175,000 for the Muslim Student Union—more than the budget for every Christian student group combined, according to a copy of the grants reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The numbers offer a window into the priorities of Stanford administrators, who determine which groups are eligible for funding based on how well they “complement the university’s mission,” and of the students themselves, who determine how much money eligible groups receive.
Three thousand students voted on nearly 150 grants, each of which passed by large margins. The awards include a $50,000 grant to the Stanford Drag Troupe, which last year sponsored a performance by two drag queens, “Slut the Rock Johnson” and “ZZ Chic,” as part of a “sex trivia” event titled, “Are You Smarter Than A Sexpert?”
That grant dwarfs the $10,000 earmarked for the Stanford Undergraduate Association of Veterans, as well as the $14,471.96 earmarked for Stanford’s sole ballet group, the Cardinal Ballet Company. It also exceeds the $19,559.86 earmarked for the Stanford Jazz Orchestra, the $27,104.00 earmarked for the Stanford Light Opera Company, and the $27,154.00 earmarked for the Stanford Symphony Orchestra.
Stanford Republican Club, meanwhile, receives just $7,549.25 under the new budget—less than the $10,000 earmarked for Furries at Stanford, a 15-person club that refers to its members as “Stanfurs.” The grant to the Republican club sparked the most opposition from the students who voted, with nearly 25 percent voting against the funds. By contrast, only 16 percent voted against funding the drag group.
Other clubs with a larger budget than the veterans group include the Stanford Video Game Association, which will receive $11,596.98, and the Society of Latinx Engineers, which will receive $17,175.
The money comes from a $240 activities fee that Stanford charges undergraduates each quarter. Clubs request their own budgets, which are then amended by the student government before being put to a campus-wide vote. Though students can technically waive the activities fee, the form for doing so is tedious and poorly advertised, making it a mandatory expenditure for most students.
“For the vast majority of students, this is compulsory funding for organizations they may never use, have never heard of, or would find objectionable,” Stanford sophomore Ben Marek wrote in the Stanford Review. “Most students are left unwittingly funding clubs that they’ve never heard of, unless they figure out how to wade through the high-friction opt-out bureaucracy.”
A spokeswoman for Stanford, Angie Davis, said that the allocation decisions were made through a “consistent, neutral process that applies the same standards to all student organizations, regardless of viewpoint or affiliation.”
“This is a student-led process,” she added.
In fact, administrators decide which student groups can participate in the process at all. Stanford says it will only recognize clubs that “support the university’s mission of teaching, education, and research,” a provision that appears to include identity-based groups at the expense of more altruistic ones.
The school is unlikely to approve a “charitable organization designed to provide health education resources in Tanzania,” a Stanford website states, since the intended beneficiaries are not Stanford students. “More successful examples” include “Black and Queer at Stanford,” a “support organization dedicated to the affirmation and advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and queer identified students of African descent.”
The grants form a stark contrast with the image of moderation that Stanford has sought to cultivate since the Trump administration launched its war on higher education early last year. In a June 2025 press release, the university touted its commitment to “constructive dialogue” through “civic salons” and the “ePluribus Stanford” program. It has also launched a new civics initiative in conjunction with the Zephyr Institute, a center-right humanities organization based in Palo Alto.
But the university’s undergraduates could be an obstacle to that centrist pivot. Stanford’s student government has been at the center of several controversies involving free speech and political litmus tests, such as when it denied funding in 2021 for a Stanford College Republicans event with former vice president Mike Pence. (The denial was later reversed.)
Though Davis, the Stanford spokeswoman, said that “award allocations are driven by the amount that each student group requests,” the student government has been known to deny funding outright to a sizable minority of applicants, while other clubs have received less money than they requested after review by the appropriations committee.
The drag troupe, for example, initially requested $70,000 in its application for university funds, $20,000 more than the amount approved by the student government. The application said the money would support up to 11 performances over the next year, including Stanford’s annual “Dragfest,” which the application claims is “one of the most … highly attended free events on campus.”
“Each show is meant to be catered to cover all experience levels with drag and queerness in general,” the application reads. “One of our core values is to make drag comprehensively accessible for all Stanford students.”
Read the full article here
