SOMETHING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO NAME A REC CENTER

By Juan Montoya
An item that was tabled at the March 31 meeting of the board of trustees of the Texas Southmost College is generating a lot of talk in many quarters.
Item 7 of the meeting (where trustee Trey Mendez was absent)  called for the "consideration and approval on adopting a resolution on naming the Recreation Center."
The item was put on the agenda at the behest of trustee Art Rendon who replaced former trustee Rene Torres who ultimately chose not to run. Both men showed up to file for the position, but Torres decided to withdraw his name just before the deadline for filing on the last day.
Although the agenda item did not mention who the imposing state-of-the art Recreation Center, Art Rendon's resolution named his predecessor Torres as the nominee.
The 108,891-square-foot, $18 million building provides space for class instruction and campus recreation activities.
The other wing houses campus recreation offices and the Department of Health and Human Performance in the School of Education.
The REK was built using a student fee to fund the facility after students voted to pay an additional $79 each semester to build it. As planning continued, the 2004 bond issue provided for a much-needed health and human performance education building. The two projects were combined to create a first-class dual purpose facility.
Torres, who served as trustee from 2008 to 2014, retired as an assistant professor in the UTB/TSC Curriculum and Instruction Department.
He was a standout baseball player in high school and college before becoming known as a leading authority on South Texas sports history. He was inducted into the RGV Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.
He was also one of the four trustees (along with Kiko Rendon, Adela Garza, and Mendez) who voted not to dissolve TSC and incorporate its assets to the UT System like Garcia had requested.
However, the fact that his name was never mentioned on the TSC agenda before the March 31 meeting has left some people wondering whether the board had acted with transparency and asking why there is no policy on naming buildings at TSC.
"We were given the agenda on Tuesday and asked to vote for the change on Thursday," said a trustee. "We didn't even know who Rendon wanted to nominate to name the building."
Others say that if the trustees name the building after Torres, a former trustee, then they will be acting in much the same way that the former boards under UTB-TSC president Julieta Garcia did when they named a building after former trustee Mary Rose Cardenas, a move heavily criticized when it happened.
Other say that the TSC board should adopt a policy for naming buildings much as the Brownsville Independent School District did. In that case, BISD appoints a committee which takes nominations from the public and then vets the names and votes for the eventual person after whom the building is named.
During the meeting, after some trustees objected in the manner which had been used to nominate Torres and a motion was made by Adela Garza and seconded by Dr. Reynaldo Garcia against it, Rendon moved to table the motion for future consideration.
"Who knows," said a TSC staffer. "Maybe after the committee gets through vetting the nominations Torres will be selected. But it makes the board look bad when a trustee tries to name a building this way."
Since it was tabled, Art Rendon may choose to put the item back on a future agenda.