AFTER THURSDAY, WILL IT BE JULIET, EXIT, STAGE RIGHT?

By Juan Montoya
By now it has become all too apparent that the main force behind the dissolution of the Texas Southmost College District is not the UT System Regents, the TSC-UTB faculty, the governor, Hosni Mubarak, Rick Zayas and Ruben Cortez, or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
It is none other than our own TSC-UTB President-for-life Dr. Juliet Garcia.
Garcia, who has been president of the hybrid tailor-made institution for her since its inception in 1991, is now providing us her services for a pricey 361,411.
She has valiantly given testimony before those nasty legislators in Austin who are hell-bent on slashing educational dollars, laying off teachers, and raising the cost of tuition to make up for a $26 billion state budget deficit.
In all probability, she probably didn't tell them that as the state and its residents are made to tighten their belts and gnash their teeth as they scour their larders for any extra coins to pay for their kids' education, Juliet is giving herself a $38,000 salary increase, courtesy of the very residents that subsidize her UT System creation passing off as a bona fide four-year degree-granting institution.
Garcia's salary jumped from $321,665 to 361,411, a hefty $38,726 raise (or 12 percent) at a time when the state's educational budget is being slashed in Austin. And if you scan the page where the raise was made (contained in a previous post in this blog) carefully, you will see that Garcia's salary raise came from the TSC transfers, including a nice portion from the English Department.
More than one trustee have told those who will listen that in their conversations with the UT Regents in Austin, they find that the source of the rush to pass the proposed new and improved "partnership" did not come from them. Rather, they say, all fingers point to Juliet and her cadre of power-craving sycophants like Wayne Moore and Michael Putegnat as the instigators of the urgency for TSC trustees to give up the farm to the UT System.
"(Chancellor Francisco G.) Cigarroa has told me that the regents thought that the new partnership agreement that was presented to them in Austin was what we wanted because Juliet, (TSC counsel) Dan Rentfro, and others have told them," said one. "They have been told by Juliet that the problem in Brownsville have been us. What they don;t want is to deal with the problem of double governance. It's a headache they can do without."
Rather than deal with that Garcia-manufactured problem, they say, the Regents instead opted to dissolve the partnership and go at it building a four-year institution on their own.
This is fine with local educational leaders and TSC trustees who were elected to represent the community college and its residents and continue to provide accessible affordable higher education to local students.
"It used to be that if you wanted to get a teaching certificate or certification in nursing, auto mechanics, body shop repair, or basic business, you could get it here and go to work after you got it," said Javier Ruiz, who got his start there. "If you wanted to continue to get a degree in medicine or law, or some other profession, you fulfilled the requirements here and looked for a university to attend. That was the mission of a community college. But this 'community university' business costs too much in terms of dollars and now they're asking us to do away with the college district. We'll never support this. Juliet's wrong on this one."