GARCIA, OUR COMMUNITY, GET BLACK EYE ON COMMENCEMENT, TYPOS ON DIPLOMAS

By Juan Montoya
Poor University of Texas at Brownsville President Juliet Garcia is having a bad week.
On the week when she was set to boast about a record number of graduates from the soon to be extinct UTB-TSC  hybrid, she instead get a black eye when the commencement ceremonies turn into a Chinese fire drill, or as most veterans call it a, a cluster____.
The, to add insult to injury, it turns out that the diplomas the graduates received had embarrassing misspellings (typos) that must now be reprinted and mailed off to the graduating students.
The explanation Garcia gave for the sanfu?
"Everybody looked for their particular thing and I think nobody looked at the whole of it and read it. I'm not sure who finally didn't do it, but it was a typo and I'm glad it was discovered early enough...It would have been terrible to discover it five years from now."
Now, really, isn't that a lame excuse?
What are we supposed to think of that statement? Are we to think that it would take five years for the graduates of the "community university" five years before anyone read their diploma? And what about all those people in her inner circle and in the registrar's office who helped to prepare the diplomas? Can't they spot an error when they see one?
So now we have proofreaders, department heads with master's degrees, and PhDs who approved the work and these errors slipped though right under their noses?
These mistakes would be understandable from remedial college students who may have not passed their writing courses. But this is inexcusable from an institution representing the academic and scholarly sophistication of the University of Texas.
These type of stunts – like the massacre of the Scorpion baseball team without even telling the coach, TSC President Lili Tercero, or their TSC "partners" on the board of trustees – smack of provincialism and pettiness.
Having fallen victim to typos numerous times ourselves, we can commiserate with the president on this one.  But the heavy-handedness that the Garcia administration has shown in the past to those who don't agree with it is a long-established pattern that leaves little room for forgiveness.
Lest someone think that we have something against the establishment of a stand-alone four-year university in Brownsville, perish the thought. We wish it the best and want the UT System success because upon its success is hinged the accessibility of a world-class education for our residents.
Our beef was with the UT System continuing its cannibalistic depredations of our community college district and the continued burden upon district taxpayers – some of the poorest in the nation – while raising its tuition rates and user fees to levels that surpassed any other in the entire state.
When an episode such as the mismanaged commencement and the embarrassing misspellings on graduates' diplomas surfaces, it not only is a black eye on Garcia and her administration, it is also una verguenza to all of us who live here and call this community home.