RENE TORRES: "I WON'T ALLOW TSC TO GO DOWN WITH THE STROKE OF A PEN"

By Rene Torres
Beyond the spring flowers, the skyscraping palm trees and the battled worn structures, stand a low ranking student body, a staff with poor morale and a faculty overloaded with work— crying out for help.
Behind the walls of UTB/TSC, a hidden body of friends has ruled since 1991. The days of a silent Board are over. A large segment of this community and society in general demands more accountability and transparency, which has been absent from the boardroom since the day the partnership was signed.
Texas Southmost College has a rich history of success, despite the humblest of beginnings, when it shared a campus with the Brownsville Independent School District. The Junior College of the Lower Grande Valley was born in 1926, and 24 years later, it became Texas Southmost College (TSC).
As it progressed from the military barrack classrooms that housed eager students returning from war, it quickly became a reputable institution of higher learning. In the days right after WW II, the G. I. Bill brought the local boys (and soon thereafter, girls) into the modest classrooms of yesteryear.
To look at the past will help you better understand why I have a passion to save our community college. It’s important to me, as it should be to you, that we preserve TSC’s history, traditions and memories that are associated with an institution that was formed, not only on the backs of the people of this community, but by the citizens of the surrounding communities as well. Unlike today, much of the emphasis back then was placed on spending its money on instruction, rather than aesthetics.
“Buildings do not make a university.” Those were the words of Francisco Cigarroa, Chancellor of the University of Texas System, when he first visited the Brownsville campus in 2009.
A learning environment does not distinguish between a thousand dollar desk and a desk that was previously used by a GI. TSC provided a place for learning from the beginning. It was dedicated to delivering instruction from engineering to vocational and technical programs that were meaningful then and continue to be meaningful today.
TSC, in its heyday, according the United States Department of Education and to accreditation agencies of the period, was among one of the best junior colleges in the state.
Today, the University of Texas System has given us the opportunity take our junior college back. This new proven model, of two autonomous institutions, will allow both to co-exist in collaboration with each other, rather than in isolation of each other.
It is our responsibility to guide over three thousands students that are taking remedial classes from the most obscure corners of the university to the forefront of instruction. Placing a remedial student in a university environment is setting them up for failure.
Our ultimate goal as a junior college would be to prepare our students to immediately enter the job market and/or to prepare him/her to transfer as “a college ready student” into UTB or any other university of his/her choice.
We have a 50 percent dropout rate among this profile of student and UTB has a 17 percent graduation rate. This ranking is one of the worst in the country among universities our size. Looking at it in another way, 83 percent of our students never finish with a degree, and leave with an average debt of $15,000 to $20,000.
The UT-System can no longer afford to be embarrassed by having one of its campuses with such a poor ranking. In the latest U.S. News and World Report, UTB/TSC was placed under an “UNRANKED,” category, too low to be recognized.
In the same report, UT-Pan American at Edinburg, which educates the same profile of students that we do, was ranked among one the best in the West Region of the United States. The question we should be asking is how are they doing it?
You, the taxpayer, have been told that you would automatically save millions if we had accepted the concept of “a one fit all university.” If you break it down into raw dollars, you will be saving $12 a month, but you would have to give up $ 198 million of TSC assets. At this rate, how long will it take you to see a real savings? Decades, decades and decades!!
It also has been said that the UT-System would phase out the taxing district. While true, this will only happen when TSC taxpayers retire its bond debt. The UT-System has stated that it would take about 23 years to retire the bonds.
What does this mean to the local taxpayer? It would require you to continue subsidizing the richest university system, next to Harvard, for the next two decades—a clear example of the poor subsidizing the rich and taxation without representation.
The focus should be to demand full state funding for the four year institution instead of dividing this community by taking from TSC. The UT-System, under the single entity proposal promised to maintain the junior college mission, but only for certain vocational and technical programs. The rest of the lower level students, not within those programs, which equal to about five thousand, would continue to pay tuition and fees three times the state rate.
Under an autonomous TSC, all students, regardless of the program there in, could receive up to 20 percent discount on their tuition and fees—a saving of $1,200. If you take into account that TSC has five thousands students, their savings would be $6 million per year.
In defense of the UT-System, they have never demanded and are not demanding for us to give them anything—they just simply placed two proposals on the table. The pressure is coming from within.
I’m not dismissing the fact that the UT-System has contributed to the present arrangement. But TSC’s contribution to the partnership is immeasurable—and I say this because it comes from the pockets of this country’s poorest citizens.
As per a recent correspondence sent to the TSC board of trustees by the UT-System, they repeated they’re committed to stay in Brownsville. The UT-System has embraced the idea of two independent institutions and has demonstrated this by recently writing its first draft of a bill advancing the concept.
In a letter dated February 28, 2011, the UT-System reiterated their commitment to assist TSC, by saying, “The Standards of excellence in higher education will be maintained as we work to advance the respective institutional missions as TSC becomes a separately accredited institution.”
The UT-System added that “ UT-Brownsville will work closely with the Commission of Colleges and Southern Association of Colleges and Schools on the separately accredited unit process.” The letter was signed by Chancellor Francisco G. Cigarroa and Juliet V. Garcia.
The UT-System is placing the issue of a new partnership agreement on the fast track. A majority of the TSC board of trustees are moving forward in joining them in establishing new opportunities for all our students. This new venture will eventually form “a more perfect union,” leading both institutions into a higher order of prominence.
Let us move forward. In 1991, UT-System officials said that it would take 20 years before Brownville would be ready for a legitimate four year university—the twenty years are up and the UT-System is keeping their promise.
In these days, when many talk about rights and few about duties, I choose to talk about duty. I strongly feel that it’s my duty to represent you, the taxpayer, all that make up the UTB/TSC family and the community in general.
My concern is not only for the students of today, but for the next generations of students. Texas Southmost College represents a piece of this city’s most precious history—and as far as I’m concerned, I will not allow it to go down with a stroke of a pen.
GO SCORPIONS!!