Once again, why bring us up if we are so strange and irrelevant? We love our school, and I know we are delusional sometimes, but most fan bases are. I admit to Texas' value and their position in the national pecking order vs us, and I think that your diversity is also a strength. That being said, you can't have it both ways; meaning diversity and a sense of solidarity and community with respect to your athletic programs or your institution for that matter. One tends to negate the other to some point. Most honest people recognize this.
This is the very reason I rejected Texas A&M, over 30 years ago. Some friends and I went to visit. We were a diverse group, racially. In College Station and particularly on the TAMU campus, we were made to feel unwelcome in a very white, racist culture. Nothing happened like that group from DFW reported about a year ago, but we sure felt out of place. There was virtually no diversity at TAMU. It wasn't a core value, let's just say.
We continued our campus visit trip to Baylor and then to Texas. We all felt a whole lot more welcome at The University of Texas at Austin, than at any of our other stops. (I don't know why we didn't also visit Rice, unless maybe it was that we were from the Houston area.)
I am SO glad we made those campus visits, instead of just applying.
The report from that DFW group tells me that not much has changed since the mid-1980s.
Despite being raised without any animus against TAMU or Aggies (after all, I WAS seriously considering studying there), I struggled to show respect to Aggies, due to what I'd experienced. However, that's just a form of prejudice, and that's what I stand against. So, today I work with Aggies and they are my friends, and I hope that their time in B-CS didn't lead them to develop the evil attitudes I've noticed.
