Before FAU’s drag show disappeared from the fall calendar in 2025, its name and audience had already changed.
The event became “Owl Manor” in 2023. It was closed to the general public, and students had to be 18 or older to attend. In interviews published that year, student organizers described those changes as a way to keep the show going amid political pressure surrounding drag and LGBTQ+ programming in Florida. Despite those changes, the show disappeared from the fall calendar in 2025.
“We kind of had to finesse the system so that on a university scale, it could still happen,” Noadia Lindor, then associate director of Multicultural Programming, told the University Press in October 2023.
Lindor said she doubted the show would have happened if organizers had insisted on keeping its name and opening it to everyone.
The changes continued in 2024. Owl Manor was open to FAU students, faculty and staff ages 18 and older, with a government-issued ID required for entry. Tickets were free for students and $5 for faculty and staff.
Funding was another concern.
Jelina Garcon, then Homecoming Director, told OutFAU in October 2024 that organizers had worried the event would not receive funding. She said changing how events were described, with less emphasis on diversity, could help preserve their support.
For Giulia Fuentes, then associate director of multicultural programming, the event also presented a safety concern. In the same story, Fuentes described worries about a possible attack and said organizers wanted to protect students. Security arrangements included metal detectors and restrictions on bags.
The organizers’ accounts describe decisions made in response to political pressure and safety concerns; they do not establish that state law required each change.
For performers, the consequences of a smaller audience were more immediate.
Longtime host Ariel Rimm told OutFAU in 2024 that closing the show to the public affected performers’ income and limited its reach. By the following year, she described growing frustration with how the event had been handled.
“It was always the ‘FAU drag show,’” Rimm said in the December 2025 story. “Then it changed to ‘Owl Manor’ because they couldn’t have the word [drag] as part of the show.”
That was Rimm’s account of the name change. In the earlier coverage, student organizers had also connected the event’s rebranding to political pressure and concerns about safety.
Rimm also described a shrinking audience. In the December 2025 interview, she estimated that the previous year’s show had drawn about 100 people, compared with 800 or 900 in earlier years.
By fall 2025, even that smaller version of the event was gone.
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