President Fenves, I have a bone to pick with you.
In response to the serial bombings affecting the Austin area, UT's President, Gregory Fenves, sent out an email on March 19 warning students to be vigilant and to extend sympathies to the two victims of the bombings, one of which was Draylon Mason, an incoming freshman accepted to the Butler School of Music.
The problem? The subject of the email is "Update on Tuition Rates," and the comments about the victims were followed by a digression on incoming tuition hikes for Fall 2018 and the following spring semester. It ends with a quip attempting to justify raising tuition hikes to make UT accessible. Seriously? WTF.
Where do I even begin?
This is grossly inappropriate and quite frankly disgusting. People are dead. A future UT student has been slain. A rising star snuffed out before his time. Where is the respect? Where is the dignity?
President Fenves, shame on you.
The layers behind this email are troublesome. First of all, Draylon Mason, an African American, was the victim of what could have been a race-based hate crime. The UT system has a severe problem with addressing the current racial climate, and the email makes no mention that Draylon Mason's death was quite possibly a result of hatred toward his race. To top it off, there is literally one sentence mentioning Draylon Mason.
Now I don't want to be that person, but I sure as hell will be. Let's compare Fenves' response to last year's tragic stabbing of UT freshman Harrison Brown. Justifiably, we got an entire email about Harrison Brown and his character, remembering who he was. Fenves states in the May 2nd email regarding Harrison, "I want to hear how you feel" and "I want to understand the impact of this tragic event."
Why was this privilege not afforded to Draylon Mason? Can you imagine the outrage if Fenves had decided to end the email regarding Harrison with some bullshit about how Welch Hall is in the process of getting renovated?
President Fenves, there is a time and place to address the community about tuition hikes and mentioning a slain incoming student within the same email is grossly inappropriate. UT claims that it has its students best interest at heart, but it is painfully and resoundingly clear that this university is run more like a business and that it treats its students as statistics to tout.
Draylon Mason deserved better. His family deserves better. UT deserves better.
Sincerely,
An enraged student
P.S. UT has an endowment of nearly 4 BILLION dollars, so how about applying some of that to helping students pay for this overpriced education? We just got a tuition hike last semester and now we're getting two more? Disgusting.
