The power struggle that’s enveloping the University of Texas System is not going to end well if the system regents don’t back off and let the man they hired to run the flagship campus do his job without interference.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/08/the-brief-top-texas-news-for-april-8-2013/

UT-Austin President Bill Powers has been in an ongoing battle with regents who many critics are saying – in an increasingly loud voice – are meddling in administrative matters that should be within the purview of the campus’s chief executive officer.

The Texas Tribune reports that the temperature is elevating once more in the regents’ board room. Regents Chairman Gene Powell has asked Attorney General Greg Abbott if the system can withhold information from state legislators who are seeking system records. My advice, for what it’s worth, to the AG is to force the regents to give everything up. And this is where Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, can step in. He runs the committee that oversees higher ed affairs – in which the UT System, of course, is a huge player.

No one is suggesting malfeasance on Powers’s part. No one is saying out loud that he’s doing a poor job of running the UT System’s mother-ship campus. If he was doing badly, he’d be fired.

My strongest hope is not necessarily for Bill Powers, who I do not know. It is for the UT System, which has graduated a lot of fine folks with whom I am acquainted. Some of ‘em even are good friends of mine. They’re sick about what’s going on there.

Fix this problem, ladies and gentlemen.