Since 2014, crowds of hundreds have filled the Reitz Union each Spring to watch a cosplay drag show, the headline event of the free multiday, multigenre SwampCon.
But this year, SwampCon the Club, the UF student organization that hosts the event, canceled the beloved show. The event will go on without drag performances, the organization wrote in a social media post Feb. 18.
The organization cited a 2023 Florida bill as the primary cause for the cancellation. The bill restricts university spending of state funds on programs or campus activities that “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism.”
The announcement, made through an Instagram post, was met with disappointment and discourse. The post received over 1,200 likes and over 150 comments, most of which expressed frustration with the change.
SwampCon is a multiday convention dedicated to “[celebrating] Japanese arts and fashion, gaming, pop culture, cosplay, and performance arts across fandoms,” as described on its website. The event hosts all kinds of artists and vendors, from anime figure resellers to fan artists selling their works.
Andrea Rendon, a fifth-year University of Central Florida aerospace engineering major who previously attended UF, said SwampCon served as one of her first experiences interacting with queer art. Growing up in a small town in Central Florida, she never experienced drag shows until college, she said.
“I love seeing queer joy as someone of the community myself,” Rendon said. “I found it was a way for a lot of queer people to come together and enjoy someone’s art.”
Even though she no longer lives in Gainesville, the 23-year-old has made attending SwampCon a yearly tradition. She traveled to the event last year, and she plans to make the journey again, despite the drag show’s cancellation, in order to support the artists who will still be present.
Ongoing diversity funding cuts
The Florida bill cited by SwampCon previously resulted in the elimination of the UF Office of the Chief Diversity Officer in 2023. Earlier this year, the university declined renewal of Signature Event designations to groups including the Hispanic-Latine Student Assembly and Pride Student Union welcome assembly — leaving them scrambling to find alternative funding.
Signature Event status provides student-led events with funding and event space that exceeds what is possible with a typical Student Government-provided budget.
Last Fall, after the PSU assembly lost its Signature Event status, it had to host its Fall welcome event using SG funds, rather than using the university funding it typically relies on.
PSU president Steph Deleon called the change “nerve-wracking” but pushed on to host the annual welcome event, recognizing the importance it holds to building a queer community on campus. Despite the lack of traditional funding, the welcome assembly was one of the PSU's best yet, according to Deleon, and even featured two drag performers.
“We had one of the largest turnout, almost 500 people,” Deleon said. “We have our executive board working very hard to provide spaces for queer students.”
But SwampCon remains a Signature Event, which it has been since 2022. This allows the group to “maintain funding and support,” according to its social media post.
“SwampCon staff were unable to find a way to include the Drag Show in a way that complied with the policy outlined in Florida Senate Bill 266,” the post said.
UF law professor Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky said she isn’t convinced that the bill applies to drag shows, or even SwampCon as a whole. The term “diversity, equity and inclusion” is overly broad, she said, which can have a “chilling effect” on free expression on campus.
A chilling effect occurs when an overbroad law causes groups to self-censor out of fear of persecution, Lidsky said. In this case, SwampCon has been “chilled” by the bill, she said, fearing that hosting the drag show would be lumped under the “diversity, equity and inclusion” umbrella and lead to the cancellation of the entire event.
“It’s not obvious to me what a drag show has to do with diversity. I don’t see a drag show as being diversity; I see it as an entertainment performance,” Lidsky said. “If a student organization can hire a singer to sing popular show tunes, then why can’t they have this performance?”
The rule also impedes on the right to due process, as there isn’t a clear notice of what exactly could violate it, Lidsky said.
It’s unclear whether SwampCon made the decision to cancel due to direct university messaging or out of an abundance of caution. When contacted by The Alligator, the organization declined an interview, saying it was “unable to provide further additional comment regarding the situation that is outside the statement we’ve posted.”
Drag queens weigh in
Nicki Mirage, one of the drag queens set to host the drag show, has been with SwampCon since the beginning. Participating in the first SwampCon as a student volunteer before joining the full-time staff, she founded the SwampCon drag show in the event’s third year, titled “SwampCon: Rising.”
The event was Mirage’s first major drag performance, and it’s taken place every year since with her at the helm, growing to become one of the largest events of its kind in north central Florida.
“Over the years, SwampCon has become, at least prior to this year, a safe haven for queer cosplayers, nerds, etc.,” Mirage said. “I know there's kids that have gone to school at UF because they went to SwampCon first while they were in high school.”
There were attempts to preserve the event. Some suggestions included renaming the event to “The Cosplay Ball” or raising the funds for the event independently of the university, but every suggestion was met with denial.
Mirage understands the decision by the SwampCon staff to cut the drag show, but she still feels it’s a scarring blow on the reputation of the event, she said. She places the majority of the blame for the decision on the university itself.
“SwampCon as an event, to me, is no longer the safe space it once was, because this event was not protected,” she said.
Discord messages shared with The Alligator indicate SwampCon leaders learned in early December 2025 they would not be able to hold the event. In the messages, organizers expressed frustration that their UF coordinator did not give them adequate details to defend the decision.
In a statement to The Alligator, UF spokesperson Cynthia Roldán wrote Signature Events, “as an officially recognized university program, are departmentally led and funded and are under the oversight of Student Engagement, which is part of UF’s Division of Student Life.”
“As with all university-sponsored events, Signature Events must comply with state law, as well as Florida Board of Governors and university regulations,” she wrote.
In protest of the show’s cancellation, Mirage, alongside fellow drag queen Inertia, who were set to host the original show, are hosting NotSwampCon, a drag show with the same theming as the annual tradition — minus the university affiliation — on March 3 at University Club, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in downtown Gainesville.
Inertia has a weekly show at the nightclub called “Now That’s What I Call Tuesdays,” and upon hearing of the show’s cancellation, they immediately converted the weekly performance into a replacement for the canceled event.
“We're hoping that it kind of becomes a statement that we don't need the university to do these things, and we're not going away just because the university tells you we can't have it,” Inertia said. “We're fighting tooth and nail.”
Inertia said they hope queer youth aren’t dispirited by stories like these. They emphasized the inherently political nature of drag, tracing its roots back to Black transgender women, and said they hope the youth are encouraged by the cancellation to fight back.
“There's never been a better time to start drag than when it's being outlawed,” Inertia said. “Do not be discouraged. Go out in public in drag. Go to your local communities. The only thing that we can do is continue to show up and show face, because the second we disappear, that's what they want.”
Contact Christopher Rodriguez at crodriguez@alligator.org. Follow him on X @ChrisRodri29386.
