Patriot Weekly

  (Source: via Flickr) The following is a short story to illustrate the policy change process that leaders must complete to steward the University and to move both it and its community ultimately towards a just society.  Molly, an undergraduate student at UT-Tyler, has a passion for conservation. She wants to know UT-Tyler’s approach to sorting the trash that it collects on-campus. So naturally, if she wants to know the University’s position on anything, then she first looks for information in the University’s Handbook of Operating Procedures (HOP).  In HOP, she finds The Department of Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) is responsible for trash pickup on-campus. So she visits EH&S’s university website for more information.  There, on the EH&S university website, Molly finds useful information that answers general questions about EH&S’s approach to waste management. As a conservationist, Molly knows she will return to this website in the future t...

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr) In my research into the spring 2024 athletics fee referendum, I simultaneously did a lot of research into the UT-Tyler’s athletics program. For example, I found that as far back as Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15), UT-Tyler’s athletics program used money from the recreational facility (a facility whose funding comes from a separate student fee, The Recreational Facility Fee) to pay for its coaches’ partial salaries. For example, in FY18, the Head Tennis Coach received roughly $21,000 from the recreational facility’s operating budget, along with the Head Women's Volleyball Coach who received roughly $20,000. Now, the problem with this is that the athletics program already has its Intercollegiate Athletics Fee. This fee represents its own allotment of student money and the funds students pay for it to run its operation. Yet here, in the recreational facility budget, I found athletics relied upon money from yet another student f...

  ( Photo : ''Court Gavel - Judge's Gavel - Courtroom'' by wp paarz via Flickr ) If there is any lesson students should learn from this spring’s athletics fee referendum it is that their student government cannot protect them against special interest interference and is too weak as an institution to provide adequate student representation To see this, consider the referendum’s biased ballot language, how it compelled students to favor the fee increase. “Nearly 300 student-athletes participate in intercollegiate athletics at UT Tyler on 18 teams. The UT Tyler Patriots compete in the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference with the lowest student athletic fee in the conference….Do you support the increase of the UT Tyler athletic fee to fund athletics, increase the value of your UT Tyler degree, and provide students with more engagement and support opportunities?" Its language should have been impartial. It illustrates unprecedented ballot access by one ca...