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Greetings patriots! Welcome to another year of life at UT-Tyler! I am James Hescock, Patriot Weekly’s publisher and a UT-Tyler alumnus. I hope you have a great semester! Each week, Patriot Weekly will bring you campus news to keep you informed of what’s happening at the University. I hope you enjoy the publication!
In spring, Patriot Weekly published stories about the student body president election, the ongoing problems with parking scarcity, the campus convenience store prices and most of all, the athletics fee referendum. The publication plans to continue these stories this semester as developments occur. Have an issue you’d like the publication to cover? Please send tips to hescockjames01@gmail.com.
On Aug. 21, in anticipation for The Board of Regents’ meeting (this is the state board that oversees UT-Tyler) and in light of my spring reporting for Patriot Weekly, I wrote the Board and asked them to do three things in light of my observations during the spring semester: 1) Hold administrators accountable for conflict of interest disclosures, 2) tie Patriot Talon’s funding to coverage of essential student news and 3) start measuring intercollegiate athletics’ impact on new student enrollment. The following is a recap of my comments to the Board.
In my observations last semester, one of my main grievances with the athletics fee referendum was what I felt was administrators’ inappropriate presence in the fee debate. I observed both in student government members and in students I interviewed outside of the University Center a hesitation to speak freely about their doubts about the fee increase proposal due to fear of being disrespectful to leadership (who proposed the increase). I trace this back to administrators’ failure to disclose their conflicts of interest in the fee debate. In short, while administrators typically relate to the student body as advisors who act in students’ best interest, in this case, administrators were decidedly acting on their employer’s behalf and for their employer’s best interest. These failed to disclose this change in the nature of their relationship with students in their communication about the fee increase. This failure, I believe, led to a wrongful obstruction of students’ ability to speak freely about the fee increase and I called on the Board to remand the referendum back to the student body, only this time, hold administrators accountable to disclose conflicts of interest. I hope student leaders will be aware of conflicting interests in campus discussions this semester.
My second request to the Board was that it tie the student newspaper funding to coverage of essential news for the student body. Patriot Talon, UT-Tyler’s student-funded student newspaper, did not cover two major events for students in spring: the student body president election and the athletics fee referendum. A healthy student community needs a voice that can keep it informed of important news that relates to its welfare. This voice should be the student-funded student newspaper. However, Patriot Talon was missing in action last semester. Therefore, Patriot Talon should either keep its funding and cover essential news or forego this responsibility and revert to a student organization. Without the responsibility to cover essential news for the student body, Patriot Talon’s and Talon Student Media’s annual $90,000 student fee appropriation is unjustified. I hope student government holds the publication accountable for essential coverage this year.
Finally, I asked the Board to begin measuring the intercollegiate athletics program’s impact on new student applications and new student enrollment. In his presentation to student government Feb. 6 about the proposal to increase the athletics fee, UT-Tyler Athletics Director Howard Patterson told the student assembly that athletics programs drive up new student applications and enrollment. Likewise, Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jeffrey Noblitt also asserted that the athletics program had a significant impact on promoting the University’s brand. However, when I asked the University to report the measurements its taken to show how many new student applications and new student enrollments it received because of the athletics program, it returned no data. This means, despite this rhetoric from University administrators—while in pursuit of a student fee increase—the University is not even measuring the athletics program’s impact on applications and enrollment (at least, not in any formal sense). In other words, these administrators have no way to sustain these claims with any empirical data about UT-Tyler and effectively could have misled the student assembly about the merits of an athletics program funding increase. There is no empirical data on record to support these administrators’ claims.
Therefore, I called upon the Board to begin to measure the athletics program’s return on investment and justify its nearly $7 million dollar expenses for this program. I hope students will take note and vet requestors’ claims more thoroughly this year.
These are three main requests I submitted to The Board of Regents in my letter this summer. Patriot Weekly will follow these issues among others this semester. I hope you have a great semester!
Please submit reader comments to hescock james 0 1 at g mail dot com.
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