Becoming a convicted Catholic has, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, required me to change my beliefs on a broad range of subjects. I have tried to do this to the best of my ability, and it remains an ongoing project. One small area where I’ve changed my thinking quite dramatically is with regard to my college alma mater. I loved going to UT, even though engineering school was hell (first day, all the freshman ME majors are brought into a room. The instructor says: look to your left, look to your right, those people will not graduate with you. And that was an understatement). I loved the town, I loved the giant, impersonal campus, I loved the sink or swim attitude, the absolute absence of hand-holding, I loved the sports, I loved Bevo, I loved almost all of it.
One of the few things I did not love, however, was the preponderance of liberal knuckleheads. It’s a misnomer commonly spread by Aggies, who in their ignorance don’t know any better, that everyone at UT is a liberal. That is far from true. There is (or was) a very strong conservative undercurrent, especially in the ROTC and Greek communities and certain academic departments. UT has one of the largest Greek communities in the country, in terms of total population (if not as a percentage of the student body). The engineering and business schools were also centers of conservatism on campus, at least 20 years ago. But, overall, it is true, UT had a decided liberal bent, especially among the jackass West Campus types, mostly majoring in some waste of time liberal arts major (sorry if I have hurt your feelings).
Back then, before the internet, however, we could largely pretend they didn’t exist. On campus, the only time I ever encountered silly liberals was when I had to walk past the Undergraduate Library (the worst place to study on campus) and across Guadalupe to get to the frat house. That area, called the “West Mall,” was always filled with boneheads. But, since I lived so far off campus and drove every day, that almost never happened. And Lord knows, none of you ever came to our corner of the campus, at Speedway and 26th, where the engineering and hard sciences were located. Aside from an odd party or two, the two worlds almost never met.
About the only time we would learn of some leftist idiocy, was when it would appear in the pages of The Daily Texan, after the fact.
But back to my original point. My feelings regarding UT today are decidedly different, ranging from half-hearted at best to outright hostility at times. I still have very fond memories, I know UT prepared me exceedingly well for many aspects of life, not so much what I learned in engineering school, which largely had nothing to do with practical, day-to-day engineering, but by learning how to function in the world without help, without backup, without mom or dad or counselor or kind professor there to hold your hand and pat you on the head and tell you everything will be OK, like they do at A&M. It prepared me for a cold, hard, uncaring world. And, UT rightly deserves its reputation as a top-rank public institution with very strong faculty and facilities, especially the very high-tech JJ Pickle Research Campus in north Austin, which I frequented a number of times even as an undergraduate.
Far more importantly, however, I met my wife there. No other event shaped the course of my life, and helped insure I would arrive at the point I am at today, than that.
But, overall, I feel in many respects coldly disaffected from my alma mater. The beliefs so commonly taught there (and I think the politicization of academics, the leftist propaganda, is much, much deeper than it was 20 years ago), the immoral behaviors, the hookup culture that is EVERYWHERE in colleges today, the endless threats to the Faith: I just don’t think I could, in good conscience, allow my kids to go there. Or almost any other major university, for that matter. While I can say: “I made it through there, even as something of a pagan, and so it can’t be that bad,” I know, in many respects, I just got lucky. If it hadn’t been for my wife and her prayers (and those of her mother, RIP), I could just as easily be a dead, divorced addict. UT didn’t cause my addiction, but it certainly didn’t help it, either.
I just see so many problems. For one thing, the Newman Center at UT has always been atrocious. It was awful 25 years ago, and remains so today, from what I understand. There is no St. Mary’s, a la A&M, to help bolster the faith of a young person far from home (not that I’m comfortable sending my kids there, either). I know how I behaved at UT as a young nominal protestant…….I sure do not wish that on my kids.
When I see things like the below, however, which I really can’t even share without violating the standards of this blog (you are warned), it just clinches the matter for me. I know that even today, UT is not entirely dominated by idiot liberals, but, still………what the blankety blank do sex toys have to do with concealed carry? What idiot thought this up, and, even more, gave permission for this demonstration, right on the very steps of the administration building?
Hundreds of University of Texas students waved sex toys at a campus rally during the first day of classes, protesting a new state law that allows concealed handguns in college classrooms, buildings and dorms.
Organizers said the sex toys were used Wednesday to mock what they consider an absurd notion that guns should be allowed in academic settings. The law took effect Aug. 1.
Students and faculty at the Austin campus fiercely opposed allowing license holders to carry their concealed handguns to class. One prominent dean left the school after the law passed in 2015. Several faculty members attended the rally.
