In the most “Lubbock” move since the last time we paved a road only to dig it up a week later, Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton is doing a victory lap for a problem he personally manufactured. For those keeping track of the grift, Creighton spent his time in the State Senate writing the very laws—like SB 37—that he is now using as Chancellor to gut the university’s curriculum. It’s a level of vertical integration usually reserved for oil tycoons and cartoon villains, but here in the Hub City, we just call it “leadership.”
Creighton is currently defending the “deliberative process” of the Board of Regents, who are apparently spending 15-hour days acting as the world’s most expensive HR department. Their mission? Scouring syllabi for any mention of gender or sexuality that might upset a hypothetical “private sector CEO.” Because nothing says “academic excellence” like letting a former politician decide that your degree is only “valuable” if it’s been scrubbed of any thought more complex than a Raider Power sticker.
While local advocates point out that this is creating a “scholarly traffic jam” and a “climate of fear” for LGBTQ faculty and students, Creighton’s response is essentially: “Have you tried walking across campus?” He insists that since the campus looks diverse, everything is fine—even if the actual education being offered has the intellectual nutritional value of a bag of Spudnuts. He’s also leaning hard into buzzwords like “AI-dominated marketplace” and “efficiency,” because apparently, the best way to prepare students for the future is to make sure they never learn anything that wasn’t approved in a 1950s boardroom.
Ultimately, Creighton claims he’s just looking out for the “brand,” ensuring that Tech graduates are ready for high-paying jobs. It’s a touching sentiment from a guy who hasn’t had to look for a real job in twenty years because he’s been too busy drawing his own maps and writing his own job descriptions. If you’re a student worried about your research being censored, don’t worry—Creighton says his door is always open for “input,” which is political-speak for “I’ll listen to you right before I do exactly what I already planned to do.”
If the “tip of the spear” for higher education involves a former Senator grading his own homework and calling it a masterpiece, is it really an education, or just a very expensive four-year orientation for a cubicle?
Source:
