From the editor: Troll blogger Duardo Paz-Martinez, claims he's been offered a "Writer-in-Residence" grant of $60,000 per year to promote Texas Southmost College. He claims that, while he's mulling over the offer, he may hold out for $75,000.
Duardo also writes:
"But it was an Email sent to this website by an influential person tied to Texas Southmost College that looped me. It was a nice note, asking if I’d be interested in a “writer-in-residence” post at the small, historical college. My initial reply was that I would consider it under certain terms.
The writer of the Email is a well-known resident who requested confidentiality for now. I find it to be a wonderful idea, one that needs no hiding and one that perhaps is long overdue in a town always searching for all that is good. TSC has not always been a favorite of ours, mainly because nothing of any great substance comes out of its hallowed halls. Most of the news it makes is of a political nature.
But we’ll see where this goes."
What makes this offer somewhat suspect is that Duardo has been extremely critical of our city, comparing it unfavorably to his beloved McAllen. He refers to all of Brownsville's political leaders as "beaners."
Google shut down his former blog when I brought it to their attention that nearly a dozen articles in a row attacked me, my wife Nena or our son. Google shut him down within the hour.
The very next day and for one year after, I received at least 30 obscene anonymous comments about Nena daily.
Duardo's "stories" are typically fanciful, made up, loose with the facts.
It seems extremely odd that any knowledgeable "benefactor" would select this particular person as an advocate for TSC at any salary, even pro bono.
Below is Duardo's most recent article about TSC, calling for the school to be "shut down."
By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ | Editor of The Republic
BROWNSVILLE, Texas – The puny junior college that State Rep. Rene Oliveira is said to have betrayed (ha ha) has its best years fading in the local educational rear-view mirror, its future now resting on local taxpayers who just don’t see the positive return on their investment. Student enrollment at bucolic Texas Southmost College has not kept up with other 2-year colleges across the state. In fact, South Texas College in nearby McAllen has an enrollment of close to 40,000 students, almost seven times larger than that of TSC.
We ask: Has the time come to close TSC’s doors?
Many say it has.
Where it seemed to be doing something when allied with the former UT-Brownsville, TSC’s recent run has been one of troubled politics within its unsteady governing body, the school’s Board of Trustees. It recently hired a new school president after fumbling the dismissal of the previous one. Life at the little school seems to be one not of offering an education, but of wishing to portray the image that it is a player in post-high school learning. We’re not saying anything new in that respect; many commenters to city Blogs have been asking the question of whether more money should be invested in the small school when the role it is playing in town is that of, as they put it “an alternative high school.”
From a school brochure:
Texas Southmost College was established in 1926 under the name of The Junior College of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and admitted its first class on September 21 of that year. The school was originally a subsidiary of the local school district.
Plus, really, beyond that nostalgia, how much is a TSC diploma worth these days?
Administrators and supporters of the almost 91-year-old school like to point
to its glory days, back when it was the only alleged institution of “higher” learning for local Mexicans. To be fair, many of those students went on to earn their 2-year associates degree at TSC and then chase their Bachelor’s degrees at better schools such as Pan American College in Edinburg west of here and at better schools upstate. Some of them even were residents of some social standing here, although many more were simply poor, huarache-wearing kids looking for a way out of poverty and a lousy, dusty community.
TSC has become one of those taxpayer-supported enterprises that is too-expensive and that can be shut down with minimal effect to the city. A handful of administrators and educators would lose their jobs, but life would go on for those professionals. City taxpayers pay too much in taxes as it is. TSC does not offer a generous return on the tax dollar, other than standing there as a monument to 1949.
The feeling that TSC is Yesteryear has been moving across town for the past few years, since its break from the UT-B alliance that left it looking like some unwanted orphan at Boy’s Town.
The Republic wholeheart
edly endorses a review of TSC’s future.
A recent push to offer a 4-year degree in certain fields will not help enrollment. TSC has an image and it is the image of something that once was but no longer is…
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