If you're going to lose, change the rules.
[0] http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2013/jul/17/ellio...
[1] http://www.newsweek.com/voter-id-laws-discriminatory-disenfr...
I've also been modded down to oblivion recently for saying that I don't like exercise because I find it boring. Whatev.
Maybe the state does not want its representatives chosen by out of area students who will not be around long term to deal with the outcome of their votes, good or bad.
Also, Austin is... wait for it... THE STATE CAPITAL, with a population of 912,000 people. UT Austin Has an enrollment of 50,000. Even if we held for sake of argument your statement that college students should vote in "home" districts where they don't live for more than half the year, and for simplicity say that all 50,000 students are not from Austin, what of the remaining 862,000 Austin residents? Don't they deserve to have their city represented, like every other city of similar size?
Calling Austin a "college town" is as nonsensical as calling Boston one.
The reason why college towns get gerrymandered to dilute their representative power in Republican dominated states has everything to do with the fact the fact that college students tend to vote Democratic. This is the same reason why "voter fraud" became an excuse to target minority voting patterns. It's a partisan power to try to create and maintain structural bias into the electoral system.