The Campus Conservative

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr) The UT System Board of Regents recently approved a 5.2 percent price increase for the 2023-24 academic school year at its scheduled meeting on May 3. The Board said the decision was necessary to address rising costs due to inflation. The price hikes will apply to tuition and non-academic fees and will not apply to undergraduates who live in the state. However, undergraduates from out-of-state and all graduate students will be subject to the price increase, The Board announced. Each UT System institution has the permission to decide how much of the 5.2 percent it wants to use to increase its tuition and fees, but if UT-Tyler uses any of it, then students may see higher sticker prices for education as soon as fall. Given the possible impact a price increase could have on UT-Tyler students, I went to campus to find out how students feel about the price hike. Most students were unaware of The Regents’ decision and many said they fe...

    (GPSTC classroom by Georgia Public Safety Training Center via Flickr) The Office of Academic Success will hold Student Success Seminars for all undergraduate students starting in the fall, according to Assistant Provost Dr. Colleen Swain, who spoke to student government on April 11. These weekly, college-specific seminars with the help of college faculty, advisors and career coaches will present research-based study strategies to help students succeed. The seminars topics will include, What Do Successful College Students Do?, How to Develop a “Growth Mindset” and What To Do When You Bomb a Test, Swain said.   “Some of the stuff that we learned were hacks, actually, and didn’t really help us learn,” Swain said, referring to the topics the seminar will cover. The seminar will be 14 weeks long with roughly one-third of its schedule dedicated to college-specific content. Swain said event recordings and accompanying slides will be available for review after each presentati...

(The Student Fee Advisory Committee at UT-Tyler on April 28, 2023. Source: James Hescock) At the beginning of the semester, VP Ona Tolliver, an ex-offico member of The Student Fee Advisory Committee (aka, SFAC, a committee that oversees money from student fees) told the committee that an administrator told the student services departments to request only a “flat budget” for the coming year. (This term, a “flat budget”, means a budget that is “flat” with, or contains no new spending increases from the previous year.) As a result of this instruction, the advisory committee received no real requests for greater annual funding from student service departments and it chose not to approve any either in the belief that to do so without telling all service departments about the opportunity would be unfair to all departments.  However, nearly halfway through the committee’s string of semester meetings, the committee discovered that fee account has over $700,000 dollars of student fee money ...

 (Image: "SECURITY CAMERA [DUMMY] by Hisgadget Inc via Flickr) I went to UT-Tyler on April 13 to ask students how they feel about the license plate readers that are now at every campus entrance. Here is what they said! Me: ["The UT-Tyler Police Department informed student government recently that it installed license plate readers at every campus entrance. So every time someone comes on-campus with vehicle, the reader will automatically read the license plate.  "The police said they won’t access the information readers collect unless there is an investigation of criminal activity or something like that,* but the readers still do collect when vehicles come on and off campus at every campus entrance.] "How do you feel about license plate readers at every campus entrance?" ___ Konan Guo, Graduate Student, Senior, Masters in Clinical Psychology  “Right now, I don’t have any issues with it. I could see why some people might have an issue, like if they are paranoid ...

(Image source: The Student Government Association (SGA) at UT-Tyler's YouTube Channel.) On March 28, UT-Tyler President Kirk Calhoun spoke to student government about a number of topics, including his thoughts on the pending legislation in Texas to abolish Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices in public higher education.  His comments are important given that they reveal his approach to these topics as the head administrator at our local state university. So, I included a transcript and video of his statements below. Before I present the transcript, however, I also included a summary. Readers should still read the transcript (or watch the video) to get a feel for how he approaches this controversy around DEI. My summary:  Anti-DEI Office Legislation  Dr. Calhoun apparently believes that UT-Tyler will continue to be able to train students in accordance with accreditation requirements without an actual DEI office. He evidently doesn’t believe a DEI office is necessa...

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr) Administrative intervention has rendered this year’s Student Fee Advisory Committee (SFAC) effectively useless. At the committee’s meeting last week, something happened that I don’t think I have ever seen before. Two student committee members—Beverly Luna and Robert Bennett, student government officers both—called on the committee to approve a budget increase for their department, student government. I have found most student members usually lack the confidence to speak up about something they believe in, much less while in front of seasoned staff and faculty. However, these students believed in their program and had the courage to advocate for it. I support them. However, according to Vice President Ona Tolliver, an ex-officio member of SFAC who responded to their request, someone (she did not reveal who) already instructed other service departments to request a “flat” budget for the coming fiscal year. ("Flat" bu...

(Source: "Legal Gavel" by Blogtreprenery via Flickr) Here is a copy of the email I sent to Student Fee Advisory Committee (SFAC) members this week.  The athletics program must take decisive action to exit its dependence of Student Services Fee (SSF) money or else risk losing its funding from The Student Services Fee. Take a look.  _______ Hello Justin,  Congratulations on your appointment to The Student Fee Advisory Committee (SFAC). I am a UT-Tyler alumnus and I write an opinion blog about university policy and events called  The Campus Conservative .  I am writing to ask you to take up a greater leadership role within the committee by insisting that the athletics program submit a proposal to increase the athletics fee in Fall 2023 to an amount that allows it to migrate its expenses out of The Student Services Fee (SFF) Budget as a condition for your support for its FY24 SSF funding.  The reason I request this is because the university has fallen short o...