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| Outgoing UTB President Juliet Garcia |
Today's Brownsville Herald published a poll with 5 options for the eventual name of the new school, encouraging readers to pick from among: University of Texas for the Americas, University of Texas Las Americas, University of Texas International, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and University of Texas South The non-binding poll simply mirrors the democratic request by UT system bigshots to select from among the 5 pre-selected names. If you have a different name in mind, such as the Juliet V. Garcia Institute of Technology or the Representative Rene Oliveira Party School, you may phone that suggestion in, but the eventual name will still be selected from the fab five.
Metro Connect, the public transportation link between Brownsville and McAllen Metro, connects the two campuses, located in the two poorest counties in the United States, for students not possessing their own vehicles. A 90 minute Brownsville-McAllen bus ride with stops at Valley Transit in Harlingen and the outlet malls in Mercedes, gets students nearly there with the final leg being the 20 minute McAllen-Edinburg run. The logistics and class scheduling will likely be a nightmare.
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| Representative Rene Oliveira |
It appears that the easiest of all decisions made will be what to name the new regional university.
This is a stupid idea to fool the locals into thinking they really do have a branch of the UT system in their "backyard". As any cursory review of statistics will indicate, separately or combined, these two institutions are at the community college level of "excellence". And, they always will be because they have no pool to draw top students from as the best local students get the hell out of the RGV as fast as they can and NO ONE is going to move to the valley to attend a poor imitation of a UT system institution. Why would they?
ReplyDeleteAs far as naming the institution, anything other than UT Rio Grande Valley would be false advertising. Let people know up front what they are in for. Use Americas and they will think they are going to Cholua, Puebla, Mexico. Or, how about UT Valley Transit?
The University of Texas-Dreamland might be a suitable name. Or, The University of Texas for Social Promotions might be a good replacement for UTB. Since other UT campuses have "The University of Texas - (location or region....like Permian Basin, Arlington, El Paso, etc) why should the regents change the system. All campuses are "international", so why designate that name here? Same is true for "Americas" or "Las Americas".....all campuses are made up of students representative of "The Americas" or "Las Americas". Since San Antonio considers itself in "South Texas".......perhaps UT- Deep South Texas would (as local TV weathermen have done) be more correct than just South Texas. That leaves us with UT-RGV or UT- TIPOTEX. While Ralph Cowen would like to name it "Taco Tech" or others might want UT-Margaritaville......seems logical to stay with the current UT System logic....UT and Region or location. As for the buses, will professors give excused absences for those stranded on the expressway when buses have maintenance problems. Or, will students even use the buses???
ReplyDeleteThe comments to the media about this issue in the Herald the other day, clearly indicates that local students have no clue and should not be depended on for this decision......which clearly will be decided by the Regents.