Remember that whole UT Regents meeting that happened last week? Well, among all the spending for new communication and liberal arts buildings, and more offices for those cool biomedical engineering cats, hid a peculiar little gem: more stadium seating at Royal-Memorial Stadium!
That’s right. The south end zone got jealous of the north end zone, and now they’re going to add 3,500 to 4,000 bleacher seats with $21 million in bonds and $4 million more to be gathered through donations.
No one has even had the chance to get drunk in the new north end zone yet! Look, I love Longhorn football like any student should, but aren’t there more important things for which to raise money at this point?
When the regents make allowances to spend 5% of the system’s permanent university fund (worth about $11.7 billion) per year instead of 4.75%, and that $27 million annual increase in available cash is considered news, we should not be so quick to blindly approve every $25 million quick fixer-upper to the football stadium.
This article appears in February 8 • 2008.