BUT SERIOUSLY FOLKS. TAKE MY PARKING LOT, PLEASE.

By Juan Montoya

Now we know the real reason why the Texas Southmost College Board of Trustees decided to turn down the request by Charro Days Fiesta Inc. President Kenneth Lieck to reconsider the terms of a contract to rent the parking lot in front of the International Technology, Education, and Commerce Center for their annual carnival.
The carnival has clowns.
And given the shenanigans that the board of TSC, along with its freak show Siamese academic twin –the University of Texas at Brownsville – is pulling off, it would have been too much competition.
Consider, within the past year, we have been a rapt audience to acts of unusual academic brilliance from our stalwart trustees as they manage the progress (and funds) dedicated to higher education.
For, example, the new $12.5 million library was constructed in such a way that there is room on the shelves to handle only one-third of the books that were available to students in the old Arnulfo Oliveira Library.
In other words, two-thirds of the books are missing.
The new building – to be paid with part of the $68 million taxpayer bond issue – will only be able to hold 100,000 of the university’s total collection of 300,000 books. The new library is about half the size of the old Oliveira Library.
So what do you do if you can't raise the bridge? Lower the river, of course.
College workers were out there throwing away the burdensome tomes in to the dumpsters to make sure the unwieldy books were out of the way. Brilliant.
Yet another feat of wonder was the discovery that massive "gross academic fraud" had been going on at the UTB-TSC. A police investigation found school student employees and regular staff used their positions to steal test answers.
The response by UTB-TSC board and administrators. Forgeddaboutit!
Instead of pressing Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos to prosecute some of these cheaters – including some who sold the answers and took tests for money – they chose to implement "academic discipline." In other words?
Forgeddaboutit!
Even Lieck, no stranger to controversy after a stint as purchasing agent for the City of Brownsville BISD, was aghast.
"This was a total shock to us," Lieck said. "We could not believe it."
Associate Provost Tony Zavaleta and UTB-TSC President Juliet V. Garcia, instead suggested (and specified in the contract), that the university would rather have the carnival in the parking lot behind the ITEC Center.To sweeten the blow, they offered Charro Days Inc. a 25 percent reduction in the rental price.
David Oliveira, the head clown of the TSC Board, told Lieck: "We’re an educational institution and I’ve never seen a carnival at a school district parking lot. There’s a reason — liability and image..."
Of course.
After the decisions enumerated above, it's easy to see that these bunch of clowns can't stand the competition. Better to throw the make-believe clowns in the back parking lot than to have them upstage the board members and administrators.
Zavaleta, ever the thin-skinned team player chivalrously threw his cloak on the puddle for St. Juliet.
"My president has asked me to resolve it and I will be attempting to do that," Zavaleta said.
Rene Torres, the only board member that made any sense in this fiasco, apologized to Lieck, saying that no community member should have to go through a six-month process to resolve the issue.
"I personally feel that this issue should not have come to this point," Torres said, according to a Herald report. "No entity should go through layers of bureaucracy to come before us. I apologize for dragging this on for months and months."