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Huston-Tillotson University president Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette will retire in June 2022 after seven years with the school. (Colette Pierce Burnette/Facebook)
Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette, Huston-Tillotson University's first female CEO who oversaw the school's COVID response and helped grow its endowment by 55%, has announced that she will retire on June 30, 2022.
Burnette has been president of the private university since 2015. She is the first woman to have led the university since the merger of Tillotson and Samuel Huston Colleges in 1875, which created Huston-Tillotson as the first institute of higher learning in Austin.
In a letter, Burnette credited the "genius generation" and the university's faculty and staff for teaching her more than she taught them during her seven years of leadership.
Statement From Huston-Tillotson President Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette#HTisIDEAL pic.twitter.com/R4SyaMTsji
— Huston-Tillotson (@HustonTillotson) December 3, 2021
“I am eternally grateful and humbled by the grace, love, commitment, encouragement and willingness to embrace change and innovation you gave me during my tenure," Burnette said.
In her tenure, Burnette helped expand the university's endowment and STEM programs, oversaw her "passion project" to partner with Apple and create the African American Male Teacher Initiative, and partnered with Tesla in their manufacturing engineering curriculum. HT also started both a Master of Business Administration program for working professionals and opened the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center in East Austin in her time as president.
Burnette was also tasked with shifting the university to online learning as the pandemic began and COVID-related policies since then, including a Friday announcement encouraging all students to be vaccinated, with the ability to apply for exemptions, for the Spring semester.
As the president of Austin's sole HBCU, Burnette is a strong advocate for historically Black colleges, is the co-chair of Mayor Steve Adler's Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities and serves on the Greater Austin Area Black Chamber. Also a proponent for community engagement, Burnette is Treasurer of the Independent Colleges and Universities of Texas and serves on local boards and committees including the Austin Community Foundation, Austin UrbanLeague, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas Advisory Council, Urban Roots Advisory Council and Waterloo Greenway Board.
Burnette said she hopes to see the university continue to be "securely pointing in a positive direction" in her absence.
"My greatest hopes for the university's future are to maintain forward momentum, continue to radiate as a jewel in the violet crown of Austin and to continue transforming the lives of thousands of students and their families as they steadfastly persist toward the great equalizer—their education–earning their degree," Burnette said. "I look forward to seeing Huston-Tillotson University continue to prosper."
The university will soon begin a national search to find its next president after Burnette steps down next summer.
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The University of Austin logo. (Bari Weiss/Substack)
A controversial college coming to Austin stirred surprised reactions when plans for the institution were announced Monday.
The liberal arts school is known as The University of Austin, or UATX, and currently lacks any accreditation and a physical campus, though its headquarters are at 2112 Rio Grande St. While accreditation can take years, the school's website says their conversations with accredited partners "lead us to believe that we'll have a much shorter time frame than that."
In a lengthy 1,600 word Substack post referencing George Orwell's "thought crimes" and Frederick Douglass' vision for learning, incoming president Pano Kanelos described higher education in the U.S. as "fractured" and outlined her vision for a new type of university where students will be taught "classical principles of leadership and market foundations."
She cites that four out of five American Ph.D. students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning scholars and that currently university students are unwilling to participate in the "core activity of democratic governance."
We got sick of complaining about how broken higher education is. So we decided to do something about it.
Announcing a new university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth: @uaustinorg:https://t.co/ZqRLXcF2n0
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) November 8, 2021
Classes could start as early as next summer, with plans for a program known as "forbidden courses" where students will discuss censorship, according to the post. Then next fall, the school aims to launch master's programs in entrepreneurship and leadership. An undergraduate program with courses ranging from philosophy to economics is planned for fall 2024.
Kanelos arrived in Austin three months ago after leaving a position as president of St. John's College in Annapolis. She and other founders nodded to Elon Musk and Joe Rogan as inspiration for the site of the new school, and described Austin as "a hub for builders, mavericks and creators."
As the Daily Beast reported, the school is "fiscally sponsored" by Cicero Research, a nonprofit affiliated with Joe Lonsdale, who cofounded data-mining company Palantir.
The university has said it will not factor race, gender or class into admission decisions. In recent years, Austin has seen fights over affirmative action. In 2016, the Supreme Court rejected Abigail Fisher's challenge to a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Texas. Shortly after, the Young Conservatives of Texas hosted a bake sale where they assigned prices based on the buyer's race and gender.
Besides admissions, Kanelos also noted concern that academics face being ousted for "having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences." Kanelos' colleague, American journalist Bari Weiss, who she referenced as an early collaborator for the university, has a history of ousting attempts in academia. As an undergraduate at Columbia, Weiss was part of a campaign that suggested criticisms of Israel, in particular those made by Arab professors, were racist.
Some took to Twitter to reference the campaign, comparing the new institution to predatory for-profit colleges, or call it a "grift."
According to the Austin American-Statesman, the school has received funds to start, but is currently looking for $250 million more and will institute a funding model that outsources student affairs, athletics and other extraneous services.
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(Shutterstock)
TikTok continues to drive entertainment, especially for teens. But one TikTok trend may have gone too far, according to Austin ISD.
The "TikTok bathroom challenge" has officially reached AISD, where students are destroying school bathrooms. Lively Middle School recently sent a letter to parents about the challenge informing them that if this vandalism continues, they will need to occasionally close restrooms for cleaning and repairs.
Though the letter said they have been able to catch a majority of the students, the school is still asking parents for their help in educating their children on the gravity of vandalism and monitoring their social media accounts.
Part of a nationwide trend, the challenge was born from students showcasing their "devious licks" as the new school year started.
On Sept. 1, a new trend started when TikTok user @jugg4elias shared a video of themselves pulling a box of disposable masks out of their backpack claiming the theft as a "devious lick," which gained over 239,000 views within a week.
Five days later, another user @dtx.2cent, whose account is now nonexistent, shared a video of themself opening their backpack revealing a stolen hand sanitizer dispenser from school also claiming it as a "devious lick." This post gained over 7.2 million views within two days.
As part of students across the country showcasing their "devious licks," the TikTok bathroom challenge came to life.
On the platform, students have tried one-upping each other on stolen items and other forms of vandalism. The trend has featured teens stealing fire extinguishers, fire alarms, brooms, clocks, security cameras, laptops, wet floor signs, bathroom mirrors, water fountains and even a smartboard. Some videos even capture students in action while taking apart their school's plumbing systems.
One YouTube channel named tiktoktrends created video compilations of all the TikToks from this trend.
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NAACP, University of Texas students file complaint against 'Eyes of Texas' as controversy continues
The Longhorn Band played its school alma mater at Texas' first football game just after the NAACP filed a complaint against the school's support for its song. (Texas Longhorns/Twitter)
In the latest play on the "Eyes of Texas" chessboard, the NAACP of Texas, its University of Texas chapter and five anonymous UT students have filed a civil rights complaint against the school for creating a "hostile environment" for Black students as the school continues to back its controversial alma mater.
According to The Texas Tribune, the complaint says that the continued playing of the alma mater and failure to address racial harassment against the song's opponents and Black students violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The school decided that the song had "no clear racist intent" after research in the spring and continues to support the playing of the alma mater. But those who disagree cite that the song debuted at a minstrel show where students likely wore blackface.
In response to continued pushback while facing pressure from angry donors supporting the song, the school decided to create a second band in which students do not have to play the song. The complaint states that this decision "violates equal protections afforded under the Fourteenth Amendment" according to the Tribune.
A member of student activist group Cops off Campus that staged a protest against the song at the school's annual "Gone To Texas" event, said that the separate band decision wasn't a solution to their demands. The student wished to remain anonymous to avoid backlash.
"The establishment of separate bands, really only solves part of the issue," the member said. "If a band still exists, and the school song is still 'The Eyes of Texas,' and it's still being played, then nothing is fundamentally changed. So it's not really any meaningful compromise."
The complaint states that continuing to keep the song "despite its racially offensive origin, context and meaning" leaves many Black students uncomfortable and unable to fully enjoy their college experience. In the complaint, five anonymous students said they felt ostracized by the university for not agreeing with the playing of the alma mater.
The NAACP filed the complaint one day before the Longhorns' first football game and a few weeks after the first protest of the song this semester, when a few dozen student activists protested the song at the school's annual "Gone to Texas" event.
The complaint and protests this semester show that the "Eyes of Texas" issue is far from over.
"If they don't take our demands seriously, we're going to continue to disrupt their events," the member said.
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