{"id":31896,"date":"2018-08-19T03:46:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T03:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31896"},"modified":"2018-08-19T03:52:18","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T03:52:18","slug":"this-petition-is-um-tempting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31896","title":{"rendered":"This petition is, um … tempting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I don’t sign petitions. A career in journalism precluded me from signing political documents that put my name into the public domain as a supporter or a foe of this or that politician or cause.<\/p>\n

A petition, though, is making the rounds and it is providing a temptation I have to struggle to overcome.<\/p>\n

It demands that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott remove five Texas Tech University System regents for their no-confidence vote against Tech Chancellor Bob Duncan.<\/p>\n

The targets of the petition are Rick Francis, Ronnie Hammonds, Christopher Huckabee, Mickey Long and John Steinmetz. These are the five individuals whose no-confidence declaration essentially forced Duncan to announce his retirement effective Aug. 31.<\/p>\n

As others have noted, Duncan is a serious Boy Scout who toiled for years in a profession known to produce more villains than heroes. He served in the Texas Legislature before becoming chancellor four years ago; he also worked as chief of staff for Sen. John Montford, another legislator of renown who became a Tech chancellor.<\/p>\n

If there is a blemish on Duncan’s exemplary public service record, then someone will have to ask him to show to us, because no one has found one.<\/p>\n

The planned Tech college of veterinary medicine appears to be at or near the center of this tempest. Tech wants to build a vet school in Amarillo, but is getting serious pushback from Texas A&M University, whose chancellor, John Sharp, has been leading the fight against Tech’s vet school plans. A&M operates the state’s only veterinary medicine school and doesn’t want Tech to meddle in what had been A&M’s exclusive educational domain.<\/p>\n

So now Bob Duncan has been caught in that undertow. Shameful, I’m tellin’ ya.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I am hereby renewing my demand for the regents who want Duncan out to explain in detail why they cast their vote to boot out the Boy Scout.<\/p>\n\n

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I don’t sign petitions. A career in journalism precluded me from signing political documents that put my name into the public domain as a supporter or a foe of this or that politician or cause. A petition, though, is making the rounds and it is providing a temptation I have to struggle to overcome. It … Continue reading This petition is, um … tempting<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6251],"tags":[7970,683,2006,2552,4579,4724],"class_list":["post-31896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-news","tag-amarillo-vet-school","tag-bob-duncan","tag-greg-abbott","tag-john-sharp","tag-texas-am-university","tag-texas-tech-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31896"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31900,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31896\/revisions\/31900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}