Love what you are saying, just not how you are saying it

While I enjoyed and agreed with the Texas Tribune opinion piece Now is the time to stand with Powers written by the Texas Tribune editorial board, I did not get anything too much more out of it than “Powers is great, everyone in the government sucks, yay Powers, boo government”. The opinion piece was about UT President Bill Powers fighting against the Board of Regents, UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, and Governor Rick Perry. The author does tell us the details of the fight like when it started and exactly who is involved. The author even goes into details about what all parties involved have contributed to the fight (only good things from Powers and only bad things for everyone else). Although I love hearing details about one of my favorite people, President Powers, winning in a fight, this piece was disappointing.

I am the definitely their target audience: young, a student at UT, skeptical of Governor Perry but politically involved, against anti-intellectuals, and having nothing but respect and trust for President Powers. So I should be one of the people saying “the author is so right, Powers is perfect and these government anti-intellectual idiots are so wrong, GO UT!” However, the one-sided nature of the argument left me wanting to know more about what the other side thinks. I should clarify that after researching this conflict fully and discovering the true ideological conflict at work here I am still 100% a supporter of what President Powers is doing, which makes me even more disappointed with this editorial’s lack of content.

This opinion piece is rooted in an ethos argument, which proves its point by making well-known people that agree with the author seem great and people that disagree seem awful. To a certain degree I went along with it, because, like so many others, I thought “I have so much trust for Powers that whatever he believes in, I believe in.” While effective, I would argue that it is not good journalism. I prefer to know that this conflict is actually about how Perry wants higher education to be more about teaching and giving professors more lecture hours and less about research. This conflict is ultimately about intellectualism, which excels through research, and how, instead, Perry wants skills to be taught in a pro-business fashion instead of an intellectual way. I gathered all that information through outside sources and was disappointed that the piece did not attempt to explain the higher education debate that caused this conflict (even though it is an opinion piece which has a purpose other than presenting both sides of an argument). The only mention of anything close to explaining the higher education debate is this- “Powers made known his disagreement with Sandefer’s business-minded proposals, which were wholly inappropriate for a university of UT’s caliber.” That line for me was not enough detail into the real debate for me to choose one opinion over the other and really sink my teeth into this opinion piece.