UTB'S GARCIA, MINIONS, GET EARS BOXED, GAGGED

By Juan Montoya
Word has reached our listening posts that the campaign unleashed by UT Brownsville's President Juliet Garcia through her minions attempting to discredit a management evaluation of the $42 million in costs overrun on a $68 million construction bond project and raising the specter of massive faculty layoffs teed off the UT Regents and Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa.
In fact, one day after the planted article appeared in the Brownsville Herald predicting dire career futures for UTB faculty, none other than Cigarroa contacted the local daily to call the comments by the UTB spokesman "unfortunate and premature."
The spectacle of a media campaign using testimonial letters of former trustees to discredit the Spire Group report on the bond issue and the statements attributed to UTB Probost Alan Artibise and Michael Putegant, executive director of South Texas academic programs for the University of Texas System and special assistant to the provost for transition on the upcoming "rightsizing" of UTB staff left Austin fuming.
"The last thing the regents want is to get caught up in a provincial pissing match with the UT in the middle," said a UTB-TSC faculty member. "They told Garcia, Artibise and Putegant to cease and desist in no uncertain terms. One more such incident and Garcia and Putegant may be gone."
The public relations campaign to thwart the criticism that resulted from the community's knowledge of the $68 million bond issue approved by the voters that resulted in $109 million spent on the same projects so far without an end in sight, prompted an onslaught of media protestations from the UTB crowd, most directed against the consultants and the majority on the TSC board.
The "rightsizing" aspect of the media offerings came about as a result of projections that the student enrollment at the autonomous UTB campus would sharply decrease its numbers. That led to UTB administration's speculations that a significant number of UTB faculty would be let go, without assurance that they will be picked up by TSC after the UTB ranks are thinned.
"Can you imagine the work environment for those instructors now?" said the source. "Virtually everyone is walking on eggshells. No one known when their turn will come. How can anyone possibly feel comfortable working like that? And what administration of any institution of higher education would put out that kind of message to its workforce?"
Others say that as a result of the overspending – and the heavy reliance on that "leveraging" on TSC assets top cover it – the current TSC board's attempts to lower tuition and student fees has been hamstrung and might take longer than they planned.
"If the TSC board finds itself with even more encumbrances than they thought they had, it'll make things even harder for them than they thought," said a TSC majority supporter. "Whichever way you look at it, the funds are coming out of TSC or the local taxpayer. Sugar coat it if you will, but that's the truth."