A&M President Banks stepping down immediately

The whole journalism debacle was handled as unprofessionally as possible. It reflected incredibly poorly on the university and there was always going to have to be a few beheadings.

I haven't followed it closely, but this seems about right.

In the end, I am glad she wasn't the one taking over our new journalism department.

Sharp doesn’t get enough credit for all he’s done for A&M

Not a good look for Sharp. I guess A&M is the media's flavor of the month ??.

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Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”

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In an email obtained by The Texas Tribune through a public records request, Alonzo told Self the investigation had been kicked off by a student “who has ties to Texas A&M Leadership.”

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This new generation of faux conservatives are more snowflake then liberal soy boy pansies. What ever happened to freedom of speech and shite ???????? Criticizing government leadership should always be encouraged, not punished (especially when it comes to Dan Patrick).

LINK

Dan Patrick is the type of Yankee-born transplant Texas should deport. He's a hypocrite who hates personal freedom and loves big government.

The one time I wanted the Journalism majors to STFU, they don't.

I wasn't too pleased with her tenure, University departments have slipped when she was here.

I read the 5 page summary and parts of the first set of compiled docs, the 94 page one, and yeah it definitely doesn’t paint Banks in a good light which was to be expected. My favorite was a screenshot of texts she had when stuff started going south and she said “I assume texts are being deleted”…. Whoops… Also, Banks had a comment on there “I hope she doesn’t go to the press before we do” or something like that once it started to go south. This lady has worked in the press for decades and teaches journalism, you really think she doesn’t have a ton of contacts/network in that area?!? Of course she was going to go to the press with it.

I don’t know that I’d say A&M is backsliding into a conservative organization, I saw that the regents did have several lines of communication about how liberal the hire would be, but I think most of the issue was the DEI stuff she had posted in past work. Academia is filled with liberal minded people so I’m not sure why any of this surprised anybody, but here we are.

My overall take is the department thought they had a good candidate and started pushing her through the process, none of the higher-ups (Banks, regents, etc) really did much homework and just gave the go ahead. All of a sudden they start getting negative feedback from the rudder association and others, and freak out, then try to pull the offer and renegotiate it down, which is a chicken sh*t move to do to someone you’re trying to hire. Just gross mismanagement overall and I can’t wait for the day Sharp retires and we can get a new chancellor in.

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I don’t know that I’d say A&M is backsliding into a conservative organization

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Idk it seems most everything happening at the state level in Texas (and in Florida) is pure reactionary politics as Abbott and Desantis keep throwing red meat to the hardcore right in a desperate attempt to keep up with Trump.

It's hard to have much confidence that the people handpicked by Abbott to run the A&M system aren't letting politics and outside actors influence their actions. The report linked above indicates the university had to tiptoe around the hire until the legislative session in Austin ended, and Empower Texans, a conservative political organization, was able to galvanize enough energy to run off McElroy.

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but every other university is literally saying "we want to be liberal/progressive" with bright neon signs and one university that says they don't is the bad guy

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That was more or less what I was trying to express in that post, I dont think A&M is backsliding into being more conservative, I think they're just trying to hold on to what little bit of conservativeness they do have for being a big school.

I dont think politics should play that much issue with school policy but the reality is it certainly does.

Did get a laugh where I saw on reddit current students just found out Sharp is a Democrat and it shocked their little perception of thinking they know everything. Granted Sharp is more of an old school bluedog democrat vs the super progressive ones now, but hopefully they realized the world isnt just white and black like the current news cycle likes to paint everything.