Texas Exes' latest gambit to brainwash Senators....

"He who walks with integrity walks securely,
But he who perverts his ways will become known."
Proverbs 10:9

[Author's Note: Our commentary is in red.]

LOL, from yesterday's Daily Texan:

Longhorn Advocates, a mentorship program through Student Government and Texas Exes, is urging students from all over the state to apply to represent the University in legislative work. 

[So they don't even come up with a cover story, they're just 'representing the University.']

The program connects students with alumni to try and resolve University conflicts, sometimes by changing University policies and procedures. Members are also connected with Texas senators from their hometown districts and partake in projects and events like the Texas Tribune Festival. Applications for the Longhorn Advocates program close tonight. 

[Notice, post Houston expansion and tuition hike, that they're targeting Senators not House members.]

Ashley Alcantara, Plan II and government senior and one of the organizers for the program, said no background in government or public policy is necessary. 

[Because who needs someone who understands how the legislature actually works when you can fill young skulls full of mush full of UT Politburo propaganda?!?]

“The biggest thing is just bringing your experience of the University to the table and just talking about it,” Alcantara said. 

[Filibuster...ALL THE THINGS!!!]

Alcantara said she hopes students from all 31 districts in Texas join the program in order to show the government how serious students are about how their university functions. 

[We're gonna put a mole in every. single. Senate. office!!!] 

[On a more serious note, this is actually an insidious plan to brainwash individual Senators.]

“We just wanted to show [alumni and legislators] that Longhorns are all over the state and that UT issues are really important to constituents in all of these districts,” Alcantara said. 

[Because UT politburo propaganda was totally a winning issue for Governor Kay Bailout Hutchinson and Attorney General Dan Branch...oh, wait.]

Mentees get free passes to the Texas Tribune Festival, a three-day event from Sept. 23–25 where they can meet with politicians and hear speakers examine social and political issues. 

[We totally want to LOL about the Trib being in on this, but they just comped our own Tribfest admission this afternoon...soo, glass houses, stones.]

“I think it’s a really good idea to get them exposed to state politics,” Alcantara said.

Last year, mentees Carolyn Soucie and Emily Burns researched on-campus sexual assault with their alumni mentor Tom Taylor and Texas State Sen. Don Huffines’ staff. Burns, a psychology junior, said she enjoyed the program because it made her more knowledgeable about how the University works with the government. 

[So that's why Huffines voted for Abbott's UT Regents.]

“I really learned a lot about the University bureaucracy and how UT interacts with Texas legislation,” Burns said. “We had this awesome privilege to work with Texas Exes and the University administration to promote UT’s legislative goals.” Both Soucie and Burns also looked into the University’s programs to see what else could be done to improve how the University handles sexual assault. Soucie found the University provides adequate help for its victims, but fails to publicize such information to the student body in a simple way. 

[More accurate statement: We had this awesome privilege to serve as useful idiots for cost explosion and left wing bias in higher education!!!]

“It seems like UT does have a good process of handling complaints made by sexual assault victims,” said Soucie, a Plan II and biochemistry junior. “I think the issue that was brought up a lot throughout this whole process was that the information isn’t really out there as well as it could be.”

Read the whole thing here.

-----

A couple thoughts:

1) This is brilliant in a diabolical way; the fact that they have the audacity to try a stunt like this illustrates why UT is such an entrenched force in the legislature.

2) That being said, any Republican in the Texas Senate who accepts allows a corrupt, liberal, organization like the Texas Exes to place an intern in their office is either foolish or willfully blind.

U.T. Admissions: Business as Usual under Fenves

"Through God we will do valiantly,
For it is He who shall tread down our enemies."
Psalm 60:12

New boss same as the old boss:

After years of controversy about admissions at the University of Texas involving letters of recommendation and accusations of “undue influence,” lawmakers have stopped writing those letters directly to the university’s president.

But big donors and well-known Texans still are.

Former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, UT donor Mike Myers and Houston attorney Roy Camberg are among those writing to help individual students, letters obtained by The Dallas Morning News under state open records laws show.

Just 12 such letters went directly to UT President Gregory L. Fenves, the records show. None came from Texas lawmakers, who were at the center of an investigation, called the Kroll Report, which found that they, along with donors and UT System regents, helped a group of 73 underqualified students get into UT-Austin over a period of several years.

....

After the Kroll Report, the UT System approved a new admissions policy that would allow university presidents to intervene in admissions but only in “very rare cases.”

Presidents are also required to inform the chancellor of instances in which they intervene, and they cannot admit any underqualified applicants.

UT System Regent Wallace Hall, who was a vocal critic of the admissions policy when the regents passed it earlier this year, said in a statement to the Morning News that the influence of these letters is unknown.

“As the new admissions policy specifically prohibits any verifiable oversight of admissions by the Board of Regents, these letters and other communications should come as no surprise,” Hall said in the statement. “Their impact and propriety can neither be known or understood by the governing board, which means no accountability.”

UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven has defended the policy, saying it is fair to students while giving university presidents flexibility to do their jobs.

Hall is suing McRaven for access to the underlying records in the Kroll Report. The UT System was willing to give Hall the records with confidential student information redacted, but he said the records are meaningless with redactions. This week a state district judge threw out the case, but Hall is appealing the decision.

 Read the whole thing here.

U.T. Admissions: Usual Suspect Bush Cronies BUSTED All Over Again!!!

"And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart."
Galatians 6:9

Yesterday's Dallas Morning News reconfirmed everything Watchdog reported on over a year ago:

AUSTIN – Dozens of highly influential Texans – including lawmakers, millionaire donors and university regents – helped under-qualified students get into the University of Texas at Austin, often by writing to UT officials, records show.

Among those who wrote directly to then-President Bill Powers and then-Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, bypassing the admissions office, were famed golfer and UT grad Ben Crenshaw, former UT regent H. Scott Caven Jr., Austin lawyer Roy Minton and Sens. Kevin Eltife and Carlos Uresti, records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show.

Dozens of others, many of them famous UT alumni, also helped tip the scales. They include House Speaker Joe Straus, former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, former regents Jess Hay and Thomas Hicks, former chairman of the state University Coordinating Board Larry Temple and former UT quarterback Randy McEachern.

....

The Kroll report found that the students were admitted by Powers, and it suggested that political or personal connections may have influenced the decision

The admissions issue and suggestions of favoritism have become a flashpoint on the UT governing board. Regent Wallace Hall of Dallas has relentlessly questioned the administration and pushed for the ouster of Powers, who stepped down in June.

....

House Speaker Straus wrote to the director of the admissions office in November 2012 requesting consideration of the daughter of a close family friend. Later in 2013, Straus directed a committee to investigate Hall, who had doggedly been pursuing investigations into UT operations.

....

Hicks, the Dallas multimillionaire who once owned the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars, is a former UT regent and brother to current UT regent Steve Hicks. Tom Hicks wrote to the office of admissions in 2011 on behalf of an applicant whose grandparents “have been longtime generous supporters of UT-Austin.”

 Read the whole thing here.

UT Corruption BOMBSHELL: Pay-to-Play Admissions

"He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck,
Will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy."
Proverbs 29:1

We already knew the institution was financially corrupt, and that the admissions process is corrupt, so it makes sense that there's financial corruption in the admissions process:

On Jan. 31, 2013, Leslie Cedar, CEO of the Texas Exes, wrote to Tom Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School of Business, suggesting Gilligan admit a student who had been rejected in exchange for a $25,000 donation, according to one of the emails.

Tom Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, was willing to admit a connected student in exchange for a $25,000 donation.

The applicant’s father, apparently, “hasn’t done much giving but was about to cut you a 25k check,” Cedar wrote. The original request came from RichardLeshin, former president of the Texas Exes, who is close to Powers and to South Texas power brokers Carlos Zaffirini and his wife, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini.

Earlier this year, Leshin, a Corpus Christi lawyer, wrote an op-ed in the San Antonio Express-News denouncing as “outlandish propaganda” reports that UT was admitting subpar students because of political influence.

Gilligan got back to Cedar and Leshin within a half hour, offering a deal in which the applicant “will be admitted into McCombs upon completing several of the prerequisites (e.g. Calculus, Statistics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics) with good grades (around a 3.5 GPA). Will that work?”

Gilligan declined to comment.

Leshin is a founding member of the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a group of Longhorn insiders established to maintain the status quo at UT. Members of the coalition and the alumni association have been quoted in dozens of news articles, creating the appearance of broad support for Powers.

Far from being independent voices, the email records obtained by Watchdog.org find the coalition and the alumni association often looped in on message coordination emails from Powers’ PR staff.

Founding members, in discussion among themselves, are quite open about the fact their group was formed for the express purpose of supporting Powers while blocking reform proposals from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and that their talk of “excellence” is euphemistic “messaging” in defense of the status quo, the records show.

Cedar insists the Texas Exes’ “purpose is truly to be an independent and formidable network of supporters to champion the university.”

Yet in February 2013, when Powers’ hold on his job began to look tenuous, the Office of the President began paying the Texas Exes $100,000 every six months to support email blasts and other communications. The “game plan” for that campaign was coordinated with Powers’ deputy.

That was on top of the $158,600 that Powers had already approved in annual support for traditional alumni association activities, such as networking events, awards and scholarships.

 Read the whole thing here.

Kay Bailout: Latest UT Crony String Puller

"Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
Matthew 7:20

Gee, wonder how she got to chair the alumni association?!?

Hutchison pulled strings for friends’ kids and grandkids at UT

Former U.S. senator Kay Bailey Hutchison sits on a committee tasked with finding the next president of the University of Texas, after Bill Powers submitted his resignation in July amid a scandal over favoritism shown to lawmakers in the admissions process.

If the university is seeking a president less susceptible to political influence than Powers, Hutchison makes an unlikely figure to consult, as she has been an avid string-puller for years.

A public records request turned up a dozen letters Hutchison sent directly to Powers in recent years, asking that he admit the children and grandchildren of her friends.

....

Two of the applicants had already been rejected, and Hutchison sought to have the decision reversed. All but one of the letters were written on U.S. Senate letterhead.

....

Hutchison remains influential in other ways, of course. She is president of UT’s alumni association, Texas Exes, which has waged a vigorous campaign in defense of Powers. As president of Texas Exes, she was one of eight people named to the search committee automatically, under the regents’ rules. There are seven others who were chosen by the board.

The dozen letters from Hutchison puts her in first place among others known to have interceded with Powers. Runners up include state House Speaker Joe Straus and two of his lieutenants, Reps. Dan Branch and Jim Pitts, each of whom has sent at least seven letters.

....

Or, as Hutchison added in a personal note to one of her “Dear Bill” letters, “I don’t know her personally, but she comes highly recommended by my friends.”

[Emphasis added]

 Bush cronies unite!!!  Read the whole thing here.  Read Hutchinson's letters here.

History Lesson: The Tuition Hikers selecting Bill Powers' replacement

"Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
Matthew 7:20

Yesterday, UT-Austin announced the search committee to select it's new president.  In 2004, UT-Austin passed a 57% tuition increase as part of a decade where its tuition increased 134%.  What does one have to do with the other?!?

Everything.

In 2003, during one of the U.T.'s biannual cries of poverty, the 78th legislature passed tuition "deregulation."  Tuition "deregulation" transferred the authority to set tuition rates from the legislature to the Board of Regents.  As Tony McDonald wrote in 2009:

When the policy was proposed in 2003, my organization, Young Conservatives of Texas, opposed it from the beginning. YCT understood that the proposed policy would not “deregulate” higher education. It wouldn’t expand competition or end government favoritism, to allow the best providers to win in the battle for their customers, Texas students.

Instead, the policy merely transferred the power to set tuition and fees from the elected Texas legislature, a body that was accountable to the people, to an unelected body; the appointed boards of regents.

This is the underlying problem with the tuition deregulation.

What many conservatives who supported the tuition “deregulation” policy forgot was that our public universities are government agencies; no different than our department of transportation or department of public safety. Allowing them unlimited control to set the fees they charge Texas families would be no different than allowing the department of transportation to charge anything they would like for license plates.

Without restraints, government bureaucracies will always find some way to rationalize their need for more tax dollars. As President Ronald Reagan once wittily proclaimed: “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

The presidential search committee has recycled several of the key players from the tuition "deregulation" saga.  Several other members have demonstrated antipathy to affordability in Higher Ed.  Consider the following:

• Larry Faulkner - Former president of UT-Austin selected to co-chair the search committee; a driving force behind tuition dereg and the ensuing tuition hikes.

• Randy Diehl - Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and longtime critic of $10,000 degrees.

• Diana Natalicio - President of UT - El Paso; no stranger to tuition increases.

• Brian Haley - Former president of UT student government; served on Tuition Policy Advisory Committee during the era in question.

• Robert Rowling - Former vice-Chair of the UT Board of Regents during the era.

In addition to these five who have explicitly supported tuition increases in the past, the search committee also features four additional members (Hicks, Hilley, Hillis, and Hutchinson) who have supported other lame-brained schemes of the administration.

It doesn't take a genius to see the foundation this search committee is laying.

History Lesson: Rick Perry Bitchslaps Kay Bailout....

"May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
And the tongue that speaks proud things,"
Psalm 12:3

Well, well, well; just as Dan Branch is leaving our life, guess who pops back in:

As UT President Bill Powers seeks to hold on to his job in the face of a growing admissions scandal where powerful lawmakers and their donors were allegedly given preferential admissions, the new leader of the alumni association is standing by Powers. Former US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison wrote to alumni this weekend that Powers “is a great leader; he deserves better than this."

....

Closely aligned with deep-monied interests, Powers has been strongly supported by establishment politicians. After questions about financial malfeasance and legislative clout abuse were raised by a UT regent, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus went about the task of impeaching the regent.

....

Hutchison, a graduate of UT, took over as the president of the “Texas Exes,” an independent alumni association which lobbies on behalf of UT. She made opposing Perry’s higher education reforms a hallmark of her failed 2010 gubernatorial race. [Emphasis added]

In an email labeled “Urgent State of Affairs at UT-Austin,” Hutchison confirmed that the ultimatum had been issued but decried it as a “travesty.”

“It would cause further tension with legislators regarding UT System, would compound unrest among faculty, students, and alumni, and invoke serious harm to the institution’s reputation in the national spotlight,” wrote Hutchison. “President Powers has advanced the university through many tremendous accomplishments, and has been a great leader; he deserves better than this. This is about our university; it is a treasure that alumni need to protect and we need to stand up and fight for its stature. The University of Texas at Austin deserves better than this.”

She described the leak of information to Breitbart and follow-on news outlets as “unfortunate” and as having “inflamed controversy.”

In her letter, though, Hutchison does not address the substance of the scandals brewing around Powers. Neither Hutchison nor the Texas Exes has called for investigations into claims UT admitted under-qualified students based on their family’s political ties.

 And how, pray tell, did that Governor's race work out for Kay Bailey Hutchison?!?

And by 21 points, no less:

Results[edit]

Results of the Republican gubernatorial primary by county.

Republican Primary results[181]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Republican	Rick Perry	758,222	51.1%
	Republican	Kay Bailey Hutchison	450,196	30.3%
	Republican	Debra Medina	275,693	18.6%
Totals			1,484,111	100%

With all due respect to Kay Bailout, if she wants to re-litigate the 2010 primary (on behalf of Bill Powers), she should expect similar results.