{"id":147958,"date":"2026-02-02T20:50:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/147958\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T20:50:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:50:06","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-colleges-of-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/147958\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to the Colleges of Texas\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

I always knew that Aggie jokes<\/a> were ironic, even as a kid. There was a father figure in my life who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in biomedical engineering. He pioneered technologies used in clinical labs to help improve how children with prostheses move. Brilliant guy. His career alone was evidence that A&M was a distinguished college. But it wasn\u2019t until a conversation in my early twenties that I understood it to be a singular institution.<\/p>\n

An acquaintance mentioned offhand that she was going to attend Muster in a few days. I\u2019d never heard of it. The solemn tradition she described\u2014Aggies gathering in groups large and small across the country and reading the names of fellow A&M students and alumni who\u2019d died in the past twelve months\u2014was unlike anything I\u2019d ever heard of, outside of a church setting. She described a few other A&M traditions and pointed out her gold class ring, explaining that lots of Aggies wear them for life. Then she granted both of us a little grace by reciting an Aggie maxim: \u201cFrom the outside looking in, you can\u2019t understand it. And from the inside looking out, you can\u2019t explain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aggieland is bordered by mirrors\u2014on both sides! What an elegantly frustrating idea. Traditions can foster impenetrability, even at public institutions.<\/p>\n

I graduated from the University of North Texas. When I was there, in the mid-nineties, the school\u2019s motto might as well have been, \u201cIf you\u2019re on the outside looking in, keep walking, but swing by Fry Street and get a slice at the Flying Tomato first.\u201d I love UNT. I love its lack of pretension. I love that its most notable alum is Larry McMurtry, who despite his acclaim insisted on calling himself a \u201cminor regional novelist<\/a>.\u201d UNT is the opposite of rigid\u2014it allowed me to mold it as much as it molded me.<\/p>\n

I had the opportunity to spend a day at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley a couple of months ago, talking with students, and it reminded me of UNT. It crackles with a certain academic and creative energy. There\u2019s little that feels hallowed about UTRGV. It feels hopeful, fruitful.<\/p>\n

What an exciting time for both institutions. It\u2019s an exciting time at A&M too\u2014with so many ambitious young minds who are there, primarily, to learn.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re living through a period in which the ideas that have long underpinned higher education are under attack. Chris Hooks\u2019s story about A&M<\/a> in this issue is about ideology and history and about how traditions can easily be manipulated to ideological ends. I have no ideological aim. I only care that our public colleges are places where ideas can thrive and where all students feel welcome to help make a great college even greater.<\/p>\n

To that end, I\u2019m on something of a campaign to strengthen Texas Monthly\u2019s ties with our state\u2019s universities. I\u2019m eager to meet with folks on campus. I\u2019m particularly ready to speak with students and teachers in journalism, media, and communications departments, of course, but there are all sorts of disciplines that overlap with our efforts. And we have stellar paid internship and fellowship programs<\/a> that provide remarkable professional opportunities.<\/p>\n

As newspapers and magazines wither and fold, there are fewer pipelines for future media leaders. Their interest in what we do must be nurtured both by colleges and the professional institutions, like Texas Monthly, that might one day employ them.<\/p>\n

In media and in higher education, our greatest traditions are ahead of us.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the February 2026 issue of\u00a0Texas Monthly with the headline \u201cWho Can Tell the Class What College Is For?\u00a0\u201d\u00a0Subscribe today<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I always knew that Aggie jokes were ironic, even as a kid. There was a father figure in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[298,10732,61654,60845,27,3042,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-147958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-college","9":"tag-college-station","10":"tag-editors-letter","11":"tag-february-2026-issue","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-am","14":"tag-texas-headlines","15":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}