WITH LILY GONE, TIME TO REBUILD TSC TO FORMER STATURE

By Juan Montoya
Many years ago (and I hate to remember that far because I'm dating myself), I transferred from Texas Southmost College to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
As one can imagine, it was like going from day to night.

Suddenly, instead of the 6,000-7,000 students and instructors you came to know like relatives, you were thrust into a world-wide student body of over 40,000, a city that lived and worked for the university and instructors who were advisers to presidents. Its alumni have grabbed a disproportionate share of Nobel prizes in various categories, are leading lawyers and statesmen globally, have served as Supreme Court justices, have been presidents here and in other nations around the world, and have even gone to the moon and back.

In fact, Clarence Darrow of the famous "Monkey Trial," was a UM Law School grad (as was former President Jerry Ford) and the first journalism class ever taught in the United States was taught there.
John Kennedy unveiled his Peace Corps on the steps of the UM student union.
So when my transcripts from humble little TSC were assessed for potential acceptance (or rejection) of the basic requirements, I was, to say the least, apprehensive that I would be made to take remedial courses.

Yet, of the 43 hours I had accumulated over two semesters and summer classes at Southmost, only 2 hours were not accepted.
And when I finally attended classes at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA), I found that the instructors at TSC had prepared me just as well as had the private tutors of some of the "legacy" students whose grandfathers, uncles, mothers, fathers, and brothers and sisters at their prep schools. In fact, some of them would come over to my room at Alice Lloyd dormitory for help with their Spanish and journalism classes.

I could (and still can) recite British Lit poetry from memory that I learned listening to Henry Sears at Tandy Hall, speak of historical events taught by Jim Sullivan, and converse on biology learned under the tutelage of Gonzalo Garza. Government instructors had nothing on Ruby Woolridge. The list went on and on.

Of course, one can't compare the Michigan Wolverine football team to athletics at TSC, but at bone time, the Scorpion baseball team could old its own against good teams on a basball diamond.

I have always bristled at the pejorative epithets some locals give TSC such as "Tamale Tech" or any other simiular put-downs. To me and to the people who attended TSC in the days prior to the disastrous "partnership" between it and the University of Texas System, they don't do justice to the quality of instruction taught in the little community college on the banks of the Rio Grande.

My fellow students at the U of M and I thought it was a great little school.
There are a few of us UM grads living in Brownsville and in the Rio Grande Valley who will attest to that.
Now that TSC is a free-standing community college again after hemorrhaging its assets and abandoning its mission under Julieta Garcia and her previous subservient boards of trustees, it's time for this community to come together and return this invaluable community asset to its former greatness.

The goals have changed.
Accrediation – gained in fits and starts – is a done deal. I am assured that the nursing program will be resurrected with the assistance of Texas A & M, that the vocational component so critical to the development of our local workforce is to be placed on even footing with academics, and that the diversionary excesses of the Tercero administration will be a thing of the past.

The TSC-Tercero debacle will linger on in the courts and no one knows how that will end. Let the lawyers do their business.
For now, the board of trustees can get back to the mission that those who established this school for the benefit of our residents and their children back in 1926 envisioned, and that is to provide an affordable, accessible first rung on the educational ladder that was given to so many of us.
Go Scorps!