Student Body Vice President Misrepresents Conservative Lawmaker In Twitter Appeal For Opponent

Texas House Representative for District 6 Matt Schaefer (Source: Representative Matt Schaefer Facebook)

UT-Tyler's Student Government Vice President Katie Hicken attacked Conservative Texas Representative Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) on Twitter on July 23. The Dallas native and Neal Katz supporter openly called Schaefer a liar, a "failure of a representative" and more. Schaefer is up for re-election in November.

Here’s the thread:

Here’s a thread explaining why you should all vote for Neal Katz this November to remove @RepMattSchaefer from office

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

Schaefer is funded almost entirely by special interests from West Texas And is accountable to those big money donors who want to influence our local politics. Neal Katz is funded BY district 6 and listens to his constituents when Schaefer just resorts to attacks and lies.

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

Schaefer believes that college students don’t work hard enough, or should just get a job in order to resolve the financial struggle. He is so out of touch that he doesn’t realize college students are some of the hardest working Americans that he represents and we are getting

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

Crushed by a system that consistently works agains is to burry us in debt and make it nearly impossible for us to get a degree and have a livable wage.

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

Schaefer doesn’t care to listen to these students who just want THEIR representative to hear them out and maybe make some changes for them to increase their standard of living or maybe make some aspect of life a little less difficult. He forgets that’s his sole job description.

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

@RepMattSchaefer also has not had a single bill that he has co-authored make it passed committee. So our tax dollars are paying for our representative to go to Austin and author bills that literally no one else in the legislature supports bc they’re so radical or impractical.

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

So not only is he oblivious to the needs of the district he is supposed to represent, but he goes to Austin and time and time again fails to inact any legislation that would improve east Texas. Maybe because his money doesn’t even come from east Texas citizens🤔

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

UT Tyler students: if you’ve lived in district 6 for more than 30 days, YOU CAN REGISTER IN THIS COUNTY! This will allow you to vote to remove this failure of a representative and put someone in office who actually cares about East Texas and the students in district 6.

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

Contact myself or @TreasurerMcleod for help changing your address to your Tyler one or registering here. (you can still vote for Beto or whoever else you want on the state level if you register here.) Neal Katz is for ETX, of ETX and funded by ETX and he WILL make ETX better!

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

After she tagged his account, Schaefer responded. After a few back and forths he said he would be happy to meet with her about her concerns. Hicken agreed.

I’d love to meet with you. When are your office hours and where is your office located?

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) July 23, 2018

Apparently, they met last Thursday at a coffee shop and according to Hicken, even though she is a vocal Katz supporter, Schaefer gave her a significant amount of his time.

No matter though. According to Hicken, he’s still a liar. Here's her rundown after the meeting:

Schaefer is an impressive politician. He’s a sweet talker and lies by omission like a true politician working the optics in his favor. The moment he lost my vote was when he told me that whether or not district 6 voters support marriage equality, he will vote against it.

— Katie Hicken (@KatieHicken) August 7, 2018

There’s a lot to get upset about in this situation (such as Hicken’s false claims about Schaefer’s non-allegiance to his constituents, about her inappropriate claims to know what Schaefer believes or what he cares about without him even having said so, and about how, in her concern for outside influence, she left out that 17 percent of Katz's funds comes from outside District 6 or that having an $11,550 donation to Katz's campaign somehow does not count a “big money donor” in Hicken’s eyes).

(Or--to mention a few more--such as how Hicken was somehow unaware that Texas Monthly named Schaefer one of the best legislators of 2017, or how Empower Texans/Texans For Fiscal Responsibility gave Schaefer an A+ rating or how Schaefer's amendment to Senate Bill 4 to provide law enforcement with legal support to combat crime in sanctuary cities it won votes from 81 of his fellow Republicans and became law.)

However, what I think is most clearly objectionable here is the way a campus leader treated an authority figure through this exchange. The misrepresentation, the false accusations and the snarky responses to someone in elected office is unbecoming of a leader over the student body. Campus leaders' behavior, for better or worse, set a standard for the rest of campus.

In this case, Vice President Hicken set a low standard for students on what an acceptable way to disagree with someone is. Her example is especially unhelpful for a culturally diverse environment like a college campus where students are bound to run into people who hold different views than they do. Hicken's behavior falls miserably short of what a campus leader's should be.

HICKEN NEEDS TO APOLOGIZE

Students should demand that Hicken own up to her mistakes and apologize for each way that she mistreated District 6’s elected representative. She should go back through what she said in her original thread and publicly say whether she still stands by each one of her statements after her meeting. Each. one.

If she doesn’t stand by something she did anymore, she should correct the record and apologize. She should state her new position on the issue, such as his fundraising or whether she was right to say he didn’t care about college students and why, and let everybody know where she stands. Since it happened on Twitter, she should correct it on Twitter. She should correct the record, be specific and say what her new thinks.

For accepting responsibility for one’s mistakes would set an excellent example. In fact, probably even wipe out the thing. After all, bearing up under responsibility is often what separates leaders from regular people. Taking responsibility is the stuff we expect leaders to do.

Twitter: @jhescock