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Showing posts with label Tenure in state universities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tenure in state universities. Show all posts
Sunday, August 6, 2023
Texas Aggies Need Not Fear Diversity or Any Future Changes
When I arrived on campus at Texas A&M, 49 years ago this summer, as a new member of the Class of ’78, I was naïve about Texas politics and wide-eyed about the magnificent campus that hosted the friendliest group of students and smiling faculty I’d encountered since graduating from Keystone School in San Antonio. Today my high school remains in the Top 10% nationally among Best College Prep Private High Schools in America.
I graduated in 1974 as one in a class of 21, which included students of Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American heritage. Today the school still ranks #378 of 7,010 most diverse private high schools in America. Some of us were there on scholarships, full and partial, others were full-pay students. Some had new cars, others arrived in dated cars driven by parents, and still more took the bus across town to reach campus.
Coming from that environment, the only class distinction made was if you wanted to study hard or not. Everyone went to college and most graduated eventually if not in four years’ time. Yet, I am neither a student of privilege nor am I unfamiliar with what it is to have friends across all races and cultures. By most accounts, I’m just an ordinary student of life, slightly nerdy if I’m frank, but no better than anyone else.
Texas A&M felt like “home” to me and little to nothing that happened during my undergraduate education dissuaded me from that feeling. Change had happened on campus already when they admitted women as regular students. Hard feelings were still held by some of the older professors who preferred A&M remain all male, all military, just as it was when they first started teaching there, but I can only think of one class where I received a lesser grade than my male classmate with the same scores. Life’s tough, so if you want to succeed, you take a deep breath and keep going. I did. No big deal. I didn’t whine, nor complain to any higher ups. It’s life and it will always be that way as long as people are scared of change.
Thanks to two men of Democratic political persuasion, Gen. J. Earl Rudder and State Sen. W. T. “Bill” Moore, aka “The Bull of the Brazos,” women were accepted into A&M. They had to fight for our inclusion, just as the Civil Rights Act had had to fight for students of color to have equal admission. These changes happened and gradually, so I thought, those who were not pleased found a way to understand that these changes were not made “to” them, but “for” them, because as a wise prof once said, “No one person is as smart as ‘all of us.’” As a group, Aggies were unbeatable, and that was meant to describe more than a collective group on a football field.
The Aggie school spirit fueled the ability for students of all backgrounds to come together and love this place in a way that is seemingly absurd to those who didn’t go here. Nevertheless, we do, and we have and as long as there is a Texas A&M, we will continue to engender a sense of belonging that makes each of us feel that this is “our school.” We don’t take kindly to people trying to poke fun at us, or to put us in a bad light. Through the years, though, we’ve done enough of that to ourselves that we have found the enemy and “they are us.”
One of A&M’s greatest allies and advocates is a proud graduate of the University of Texas at Austin—the late, dynamic leader, Mrs. Margaret Rudder, another proud Democrat who not only welcomed diversity; she embraced it. In her time here, she mentored many students, male and female, and she loved them as much as they loved her. She was never judgmental or harsh if a student had long hair, blue hair, a nose ring, or four earrings in one ear. She might say “Now, that’s something you don’t see every day,” but she didn’t put it down nor did she try to bash it. A mother’s heart loves all at all times, I think, is one way to see it.
If we were all alike, we’d be very dull. And were she here, I doubt she’d be very pleased about The Rudder Association using her family name, even if her eldest son has endorsed their articulated beliefs proudly proclaimed online. She and Gen. Rudder have/had five children and until all of them place their names there, don’t assume that they’d be in lockstep agreement of the fear-based diatribe on that site.
Over the years, many among the small group of the disgruntled have found reason to come together under the guise of “protecting” all that is good and right about Texas A&M, through their eyes at least. To generalize them, most of them don’t have any friends who don’t think the same way they do, or don’t look any different than they do, and they find comfort in that. They’re the Ron Desantis’s of this world, to use a current example not from Texas.
Every time a person who doesn’t like how things are changing, how society and education have been asked to welcome, if not embrace at least tolerate, an inclusive student body that features making those who identify as LGBTQ+ feel at home to make them feel welcome, as they should here, there’s a giant failure that continues to perpetuate fear.
There seems to be a knee-jerk revulsion, repulsion, and need to run to the nearest Bible to grab onto, some right side up, others upside down, and to wave it and yell that “they’re not like us! They can’t belong here because that makes them just like us and we’re not them!” Really?
Students in pursuit of knowledge? Students with talents and interests different than ours? Students who do not ask you to be like them, or to approve of them any more than they are asked to approve of you or to like you. When I’m confronted with change or difference, I try to enter a discussion with love and understanding.
When grouped together in class projects, I’ve seen it over and over again, when “diverse” people come together and blend their best work and they produce the best results, collectively, as a result of combining individual gifts and talents. It doesn’t make the students leave the group and want to adopt a lifestyle that is not in keeping like they entered with, but they do leave, possibly, with less fear of the unknown, and less fear of having their minds changed because they had a good experience. Maybe they even leave with more understanding about people they didn't know before. Could be friendships are forged as well, some that last a lifetime.
If I see the word “woke” one more time, I think I shall have to put a(nother) quarter in the cuss jar, because it is so easily spewed by people who refuse to tolerate people who support diversity, equality, and inclusivity. If you’re not already awake, then by definition, you are asleep, like Rumpelstiltskin, and have been, as the world around you has changed over the past 20, 30, and 40 years. And before you bring your Bible and religion into the mix, I politely remind you that there is a reason for separation of church and state.
In my day, religion was taught at home and in my Sunday School classes and church, and education was taught in my school. We did recite the pledge of allegiance every morning in elementary school, and we had posters up in the hallways to commemorate the various religious holidays of our students at Keystone. We tried to learn a little about each of them, especially in music classes where we would learn cultural songs of relevant heritage. It was there to observe whether or not it was embraced. We attended Quincineras and Bar Mitzvahs of our classmates. No one was cramming anything down our throats. We loved it!
We were always “awake” at Keystone, and at Texas A&M, it’s such a big place, there have always been approved student groups to gather together those who had distinct interests unto themselves. Remember Cepheid Variable for science fiction (the early Trekkies et al.), the hometown groups for those from smaller towns, groups for the cowboys and cowgirls, service fraternity and sororities (before the Panhellenic groups came to town), and sports car clubs, on and on.
I didn’t think of Texas A&M as awake or asleep, or anything other than an institution of higher education and a safe place to express ideas of both political opinions without being ridiculed or grade penalized for that. It was in my role as one student senator that in 1976 our leader was student body president Fred McClure, future attorney and A&M regent, and Singing Cadet, and future Executive Director of The Leadership Initiative at A&M. Every meeting people expressed all kinds of ideas and opinions. All were heard and at the end, the votes decided the direction.
Quite civil, quite inspirational. Not everyone is going to agree all the time, and there’s going to be times when students disagree with professors, but it doesn’t mean it’s a state offense to disagree, nor should it. One example. In my fourth degree from A&M (having earned a B.S. ChE, M.S. in Phys. Chem, and Ph.D. in Phys. Chem., I went back to earn an M.Ed. in Educational Administration (Higher Ed Program Evaluation). One of my favorite professors was one with whom I seemed to disagree on at least three educational tenets, no doubt because my early educational experiences were different than his.
Rather than sit timidly like a mouse with my opinion welling up in my throat and getting angry, after he’d offered his opinions and “take” on things in our books, he asked, “Other thoughts?” I took that as my opening and the two of us enjoyed beginning our position statements with “I am diametrically opposed to everything you just said.” The class would laugh and off we’d go into a discourse that was soon joined in by others in the class. We didn’t change our minds, either of us, but we were both heard, and I received an A in the class because in my papers I could cite sources and make cases for my statements. I had one of the best learning experiences from someone I had least in common with opinion-wise.
That’s called intellectual discourse, and to be perfectly frank, there’s little to find that is intellectual about our current Governor or Lt. Governor, in my opinion. Although your mileage may vary and you want to attack me or my viewpoint because you disagree with me, please save it. I respect your right to disagree, and you go vote for your folks and I’ll vote for whomever I wish. No harm, no anger. Now, can we get back to the point of the matter, which is the future of Texas A&M University? You do not have to be a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative, or any label to be a good leader, whether Texas A&M or the state of Texas. You have to be a critical thinker, though.
Democrat John Sharp is today still “the sharpest guy in the room” (No pun intended) because he did the ONE thing for Texas A&M that will be his most important legacy for the 73-year-old Aggie and career politician who will be forever remembered for SAVING TENURE at Texas A&M. When the less than intellectually gifted Lt. Governor threatened tenure for new hires at state universities he was playing with fire, so much so that he honestly didn’t realize what that would do to destroy Texas higher education forever. Sharp did and he was able to “do what he does” and build consensus quickly.
Tenure is the only thing that academics have as guarantees that they can teach without interference. If they commit moral or ethical infractions, tenure does not protect them, and they can be fired. But if they teach their curriculum their way, they cannot be punished or censured, or censored. Most teachers allow for differing viewpoints, despite what you may think.
And John Sharp saved not only Texas A&M but all Texas institutions of higher education, and he’s not been given as much as a gold watch or a plaque for doing it. He saved tenure! Yet he’s just had multiple headaches, one after another, because one of his hires has been refocusing repeatedly wrong actions and bad judgment onto Texas A&M for the past many weeks now.
Here’s the good news: Kathy Banks as engineering dean introduced the concept of professors of practice into several teaching classrooms, bringing real-world experiences into the classroom to benefit students. She helped grow and increase funding for research at A&M’s Engineering extension and experiment stations and Sharp’s dream of the RELLIS campus and expanded our level of national involvement in important research.
However, the bad news: Sharp having appointed two female (named as) superdeans (Banks and former Vet School Dean, Eleanor Green) was likely not a good idea because it elevated two women above extremely capable men who directed other important colleges, namely Agriculture and Business as just two examples. That sets up unnecessary contention, but no one asked my opinion so there’s that.
When the university finally was free of M. K. Young and his bride (who had a little office inside her husband’s office), appointing Banks as president was something I called (I even won an iced tea because I saw it before some of my pals did) as a no-brainer. You have someone you can work with, plus you share a vision of Texas A&M taking over the state in prominence and the sky’s the limit, right? But the series of missteps that followed showed where it really takes someone who truly understands the hearts and minds of Aggies to truly lead this place.
You have to introduce new ideas with strength and conviction, build consensus, and then share why it will benefit all in the long run. Banks failed to do that. In fact, she grew so powerful so quickly that she didn’t appear to need much of a reason to be a benevolent leader and she didn’t seem to stay closely in touch with the Distinguished Professors group whose mission it is to be a great sounding board when you want to take programs in a new or different direction. They’re a free knowledge base of wisdom that people who are smart seek out and listen to. She entirely ignored the Faculty Senate and frankly, that was ignorant.
I have no way of knowing for sure, but I’m guessing that they didn’t hear any questions about combining the colleges of arts and sciences or hiring the giant consulting firm to study changes that should be made. It was an ill-fated plan from the get-go and so absolutely pointless and unnecessary, in my opinion. Other, far wiser, people may disagree and if they are in power, then more power to them to make it happen.
In watching the travesty of Kathleen McElroy ’81 unfold, I have been in tears, angry, and sick to be an alumnus of a school who would dare to treat one of our own, much less any woman, like this. Paying $1,000,000 is nothing to an institution that treats millions like peanuts (e.g., football salaries) but that we lost an AGGIE who wanted to come back and rejuvenate a program that Banks had already helped bury is unconscionable.
It is true that (shown in text messages between two Aggie regents and Banks) where the regents note that Banks assured them that training more conservative Aggie journalists was the mission of our school in the future. And simply to accept that this was the plan all along? I need Pepto-Bismol. I add my apologies to those who have expressed them to Professor McElroy for the botched attempted hire and all the insults she endured. All who were complicit and guilty in this fiasco should just save A&M the effort and resign and go someplace where more people think the way you do, so you don’t have to fear anyone not liking you or your idea.
Even more stunningly tragic is the Tribune's report:
"According to the internal report A&M released Thursday, Banks received calls from six to seven regents after Texas Scorecard, a conservative website, wrote an article about McElroy that painted her as a 'DEI proponent' for her prior research to improve diversity in newsrooms. Board member Sam Torn emailed a quote from the article to board Chair Bill Mahomes stating he wanted an explanation before he could approve McElroy's tenure...The internal report revealed that Banks was heavily involved in behind-the-scenes discussions to walk back the original offer to McElroy, contradicting Banks' public statements that she had no knowledge of changes to the offer."
It's breathtaking that so many spineless people are in positions of power, particularly to the point where they can destroy the solid foundation that has existed for so long. And yet, here we are, and it's not just one isolated incident.
As for Prof. Joy Alonso and that fiasco, could our state at last be free of the reign of terror that we all continue to have to endure? Is one man and his perceived status as sufficiently wise qualified to be a dictator?
Finally, as with all things Aggie, the one thing we always have is hope. That’s what the late Education Prof. John Hoyle used to tell us in our Educational Futures class: “The Aggies always have hope.” That applies to more than just the football team. We’ve had enough “stinkin’ thinkin’ as he used to call it, to last a decade. Today, we can celebrate the entry of Gen. (Ret’d.) Mark A. Welsh III as Interim President of Texas A&M.
In my opinion, there is no one better to lead our university out of this deep morass of embarrassment and back into prominence than President Welsh. His career with the U.S. Air Force is sufficient proof of his leadership skill, yet his success as Dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service is further testament to being the right person at the right time for Texas A&M, in fact just in the nick of time. He led an Air Force that featured highly qualified men and women as fighter pilots, teams of culturally and ethnically diverse service personnel who likely belong to groups in their own time that comprise a wide spectrum of beliefs.
You know, when you’re in the midst of battle in the air or fighting in a fox hole on the ground, the only thing on your mind is to do your job and protect your team, no one left behind. That’s the basic principle of education—no child left behind. As it should ever be. There is no need to fear. The Aggies are here to stay—all of us. God bless us all and continue to keep us safe from those who would choose to lead by fear.
Monday, May 22, 2023
The Eagle Begins a Rapid Descent Into the Abyss
Since 2020 when Lee Enterprises took over The Eagle and others of Warren Buffet’s giant media sources, it joined what today is the “family” of “nearly 350 weekly and specialty publications serving 77 markets in 26 states,” seemed at first to be a good thing to be in the family with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Omaha World-Herald, and nwi.com among other of their brands. And yet, it’s been a disaster.
Never mind the soap opera through the years but when The Eagle’s editor, Darren Benson, was laid off one month ago and Steve Boggs, the editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald took over as Regional Editor of BOTH the Waco Tribune-Herald and The Eagle, one promise was “The Eagle Media Company’s newsroom and advertising teams will remain at The Eagle and not oursourced to the Waco Tribune-Herald.”
It was just March 14 when I called the local number for The Eagle as I’d received an e-mail that my digital subscription renewal price of $5.00/mo to $14.07/mo with the explanation: “The new price reflects our value as the unmatched No. 1 source for local news and sports coverage of the city and surrounding region.”
I dialed and the person answered, “Waco Tribune-Herald, how may I direct your call?” I said, “I called The Bryan Eagle, I’d like to talk to them.” She said, “Yes, this is the Waco Tribune-Herald and we can handle your question.” I said, “For The Eagle?” and she said, “Yes.” I said, "I’d like to cancel my digital subscription to the paper because of the 150% price increase." She said, “Let me connect you with online subscriptions.”
“Waco Tribune-Herald,” the new operator said, and I repeated “I’d like to cancel my digital subscription when it’s up at the end of May.” She replied, “What’s your phone number and address?” I gave her those items, and added my name, not that she was interested. I had a minute to reread The Eagle e-mail’s list of promises for what they were “continue to” deliver in the new price structure:
• Breaking news as it happens • Award-winning photography and slideshows • New Podcasts and video stories • The latest food and dining reviews • Best-in-class coverage of your favorite sports teams
I shook my head to think that I’d stopped buying copies of the daily paper at $2.00/issue and then the Sunday paper at double that (at first before going up again) after they'd been $.75/issue and $1.25 on Sundays.
A five-minute negotiation session began when I simply asked them not to renew my digital subscription for $14.07/mo as I’d been paying $52 for the prior year’s digital subscription. From $52 to $168.84? She offered me three lower rates over the phone each time I did not agree to continue my subscription. She even took me back to the same rate that I had now as an offer for a year. I declined, noting that it was unfair to correct the bills of only those who called to cancel. Why not leave the rates as they were and try to build new followers at a similarly fair price? I was not contentious or sarcastic.
And, I noted they were not even a local accounting office to speak with. We’re the home community to Texas A&M University, by enrollment the second largest college in the United States, and we don’t even merit the regional office location? Fascinating. Today, on p. A11, Steve Boggs claimed that “in the Brazos Valley, they’d grown their digital customers more than 35% over the past 12 months alone!” That was before the big digital price increase. Let’s watch what happens to their numbers with today's announced price changes.
Waco’s population is estimated as 141.997 (the 24th largest city in Texas). Bryan’s population is estimated at 89,017 (46th largest) and College Station is 121,009 (29th largest) and together, B-CS is 268,248 people without students per the 2020 census. Check the math but it doesn’t make sense. Why is the regional leadership in Waco, not in Bryan-College Station?
Today, when the Steve Boggs’ opinion column (on p. A11) announced the new plan to print three days a week, deliver by U.S.P.O. vs. a friendly, longtime carrier who wakes up at 1 am to support their family with their route, a price increase of 150% over last year for the digital (you can’t blame this on the price of ink and paper as bandwidth isn’t that expensive), and what did, let’s Regional Editor Steve, promise? Not that we know Steve, have ever met Steve, or have even once seen Steve, because he neither lives nor works here; what did he promise?
He said, “They” are:
• “Still a team of dedicated local journalists who work for a local news company. • Still care deeply about our readers. • We live here, we work here, we are part of the fabric of this community. And. • We couldn’t do this vital work without you and your financial support of local news. • Every dollar counts—for you, and for our news organization—and your commitment allows us to sustain and grow local journalism in this community.”
Breaking news overnight will not appear in the morning’s paper unless it occurs on Monday, Wednesday or Saturday nights. But wait, that’s not really the case. Recently the way that funeral homes could submit obituaries to appear in the paper for families changed. They stopped staffing that office on weekends, so death notices and obituaries would not appear until at least Tuesday after the weekend unless you got it in before Friday. Good luck to those in the in-between gap periods. That’s just not right.
In fact, it was ridiculous, and every funeral home in town has been inconvenienced by that change, not to mention their ever-rising costs that the families have to pay for what used to be a public service at no charge. Wedding announcements and funeral notices used to be a courtesy—remember that? Remember when the publisher of The Eagle would grant amazing amounts of space to advertise upcoming fundraising events as community partners and media sponsors? It wasn’t that long ago.
Times change and prices change. That’s understandable. An online subscription to the Houston Chronicle is $20/month. The Dallas Morning News is similarly $20/mo. But they still have daily carrier-delivered newspapers, they have not wrecked their choice of comic strips, nor have they removed the all-important TV grid from the daily listings, three reasons we had to look forward to the paper. We’d already had the loss of the TV guide for several months now.
Forget saying happy birthday to the young athlete whose photo appears on the sports pages each day. KBTX-TV will still include that for you on the morning show. Forget looking for coverage of local sporting events on non-print days Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. They promise more “watchdog journalism” on their three print days—Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and a reading experience “bursting with local news and opinions.”
Letters to the Editor, of course, will be hit or miss with spotty reading depending on your subscription path. Any chance to hold local officials accountable for decisions and votes might drift over to TexAgs or MyBCS or other new local bulletin board site for news that could pop up in weeks/months to come.
In my more than four decades of Eagle readership here as a community resident and citizen, no matter who has owned the newspaper before, I truly believe that everyone did their best to bring the news and reflect the community values of our special combined cities that comprise the entire Brazos Valley — until now.
This entire traumatic development did not occur overnight. It’s been particularly in the last ten years of the Warren Buffet-led demise. Buffet’s Berkshire-Hathaway bought The Eagle in 2012 with a circulation of 20,000 and close to 100 employees. At the time it had been an important community presence for the preceding 123 years.
In 2020, Lee Enterprises bought 30 papers from the Berkshire-Hathaway Media Group after Buffet had helped bail Lee Enterprises out of bankruptcy some years prior and then still retained a level of ownership in Lee Enterprises, though to a lesser extent. At the time TV station KXXV reported Buffet as saying he was a “lifelong fan of newspapers but …expects most of them to continue on their declining trajectory, save for a handful of national papers.” Sort of like throwing the candy wrapper over the edge of your boat while you’re sailing, you don’t care what happens to the water after you’re back on land.
The only employee that I can think of who has lasted throughout the duration of some three decades, whose presence used to identify The Eagle to the community is Robert Borden. Since October 1986, Robert Borden has worked at The Eagle; that’s almost 37 years, friends…he’s the Opinions Editor, you know him as head writer for the Sunday Arts Watch (after longtime staffer Jim Butler left), he’s on the Editorial Board.
That was the same editorial board where former colleague Margaret Ann Zipp once served with him and penned her fun “It’s Like This” column of local news in addition to being a copy editor—a position woefully long since forgotten, and finally, a reporter, who I won’t name, who had his home broken into and his hard drive stolen once while pursuing a local investigative story, but still stayed there and published stories anyway for another two years. He embodied free speech and investigative journalism at a time when it was not popular to criticize the university for fear of advertising dollars at risk.
Then, there was a young, determined reporter who took on early investigative stories and pursued them relentlessly, won awards, and ultimately became editor–Kelly Brown. She stayed for almost three decades before she saw the handwriting and jumped over to TAMU, and that was the end of hard-hitting stories in The Eagle.
And, my favorite former Editor and Publisher, Donnis Baggett, who wasn’t afraid to print stories that might not be flattering because they were newsworthy and relevant. He was good under pressure and he unnerved more than a few city officials back in the day when all the contracts and agreements saw the disinfecting light of day. So many people have forgotten those days because well...football, and Aggie Park, and well, football.
You know what all four of these named stalwart journalists had in common? You’d see them throughout the community, constantly. They attended the events we read about. They knew the leaders they wrote about. They volunteered countless hours of their own time across numerous key volunteer-driven nonprofits here. Each of us benefited from the work they did off the job as much as the work they did on the job.
Robert Borden, the last one standing, has written countless beautiful obituary tributes and reflections over key citizens in our community, noting with ease their achievements and things that were important to them, because he knew them, had more than just met them. He’s a champion of the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra and served in numerous leadership positions, he keeps people aware of the greatness of Brazos Valley Troupe and other organizations that don’t always have automatic audiences without a little help. He’s served on the board of the Brazos Valley Food Bank and countless other things you don’t see or know of. Most of all, he’s survived every administrative change that has been made in the past 37 years.
If things continue at The Eagle the way they appear to be going, with no one rising up as a private citizen to purchase it and set it back on a reasonable, normal course of operation, nor engendering community support vs. community disgust, it will undoubtedly be Robert Borden that writes the final opinion on the last day the paper appears in print. It doesn’t have to be this way. The story doesn’t have to end this way. You just don’t take something that has been “working” continuously since 1889 and project its demise and mumble that it’s just a darned shame things turned out this way.
Surely there is fire in someone’s soul to pursue fixing this problem. Those who believe in a free press, those who know the relevance of reporting the truth before someone like Elon Musk replaces Jack Dorsey and starts ruining everything about the platform his predecessors worked hard to build (and maintain at an appropriate level of oversight); someone must be out there to right this ship before we sing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" again. Ask yourselves who it is that should oversee, and daresay protect, the public from one-sided journalism that just pleases certain elected officials?
Will it now be a mouthpiece of the wit and wisdom of say, Dan Patrick [aka Dannie Scott Goeb], sportscaster turned senior-citizen-intolerant, genius, who wants to upend Texas education by abolishing tenure at Texas state universities? That's a second disaster in waiting...when people who possess no postgraduate academic credentials nor have achieved tenure at a purportedly scholarly university start making decisions about how and when it should be applied or removed, folks, that's trouble in River City.
And, if The Eagle continues on its wildly erratic descent into oblivion, you certainly won't read the opinions of anyone who disagrees with dear old Dan and if you have a complaint, just call...Waco? Surely not. The Faculty Senate has tried repeatedly to point out the dangers, but you're not seeing a vast number of stories that truly bring to light what the genuine issues are and what it means in dollars, reputations, faculty retention, attracting the best and brightest students, and the true future reputation of Texas A&M University. Your most current and newsworthy reporting about this topic of tenure is on WTAW-AM and in its morning headlines in your e-mail boxes.
There is always hope. For those who care about our community and preserving the best of its small-town charm in an ever-growing culture of a once highly regarded academic institution, although it has always been beloved (there's a difference)—someone can make a difference. Asked “what can just one person do?” The answer is PLENTY. Hoping a few of you who are so inclined will band together to save The Eagle before it’s too late and we lose so many of our prestigious faculty who are unknown by name to most folks in town outside the campus. The issue means everything to the future of this university as well as all state universities.
Otherwise, soon the headlines will read: RIP The Eagle and "Texas A&M experiences sudden substantial faculty losses, drop in enrollment expected"
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