Big men, boasting even bigger egos, cannot help but whimper as reality bulldozes through their overconfident aspirations. When UT San Antonio President Taylor Eighmy was sworn in eight years ago, he came quick to the draw. Eighmy envisioned UT San Antonio as a “university of the future in the city of the future,” and developed bold plans to expand the university. His vision was commendable on its own, but it means nothing if Eighmy is complacent when pushed around and his dreams are nothing more than quotes on a website.
The UT Board of Regents named Eighmy as UT San Antonio’s President in 2017, and he was inaugurated on March 20, 2018. After being sworn in, Eighmy hit the ground running, finalizing the UT San Antonio Master Plan, an award-winning proposal that laid out how the university will expand each campus to accommodate a student body of over 45,000. He further recognized the university’s promising position in an ever-expanding metropolis and its importance as a Hispanic-Serving Institution. He also aptly noted the importance of staying in touch with the students and faculty he would serve.
Eight years later, however, those wishes have fallen flat. While his initial proposals took in feedback from the UT San Antonio community, it appears that his office has since closed its doors. The relationship the average student has with Eighmy is akin to an ex-romantic partner who wants to get back together — he will email during holidays or tragedies as a reminder he still exists. For someone who “can’t emphasize how important it is that [he has] a lot of touch points in the community,” Eighmy sure is absent from the student experience.
What speaks louder than Eighmy’s Christmas wishes is his developmental inaction and community betrayal. As students celebrate Women’s History Month, Eighmy oversees the dismantling of the Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexual Studies Department, likely to court the approval of bigots in the federal and state governments. Moreover, under his watch, the Office of Inclusive Excellence and its planned replacement shut down after a series of state laws. With so much of the university being stripped away, students can only wonder when their president will consider an issue trouncing their rights important enough to fight against.
While the UT San Antonio-UT Health merger was a beaming success, Eighmy’s woefully crippling complacency and inability to protect his students earned his term a C- so far. Roadrunners can only hope Eighmy will prioritize them over state-enforced prejudice.
