Posted on 05/05/2005 4:57:02 AM PDT by hispanarepublicana
Cotton stripped from Tech seal BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
Texas Tech may face a fight from cotton farming alumni after the school announced Wednesday it would pluck the symbolic tufts of the West Texas crop from the school seal.
The changes are part of a broader marketing campaign to be launched early next year that Tech officials hope will improve the university's national reputation.
Chancellor David Smith refuted rumors Wednesday that the school was abandoning its past for the marketing effort.
A-J File Photo
"It is not undoing tradition, it is not undoing pride," Smith said of the changes. "We need a platform to celebrate what Texas Tech is accomplishing as a system."
But Eddie Smith, chairman of the Plains Cotton Cooperative Association and a Tech alumnus who was honored as an outstanding agriculturist last year by the university, said the omission ignored the major contributions cotton made to Tech.
"There's a lot of us that are tied to this university that are not going to let it slide by," Smith said.
School and system officials announced the changes Wednesday in an effort to counter an anonymous e-mail and message board campaign rallying opposition to the revisions.
The Internet campaign sparked rumors of school officials abandoning the Double T trademark while retooling school marketing materials.
In a hastily organized news conference held in response to e-mails and phone calls from concerned alumni, school officials stressed that the beloved Double T logo stitched onto merchandise, emblazoned on the sides of buildings and printed in the letterhead of the press releases distributed Wednesday would not be retired.
"The Double T has an indefinite contract," said Craig Wells, senior associate athletics director. "It's going to be around forever and ever and ever."
But it will no longer represent the academic side of the university. A new seal was designed by an Austin firm as part of a broader marketing campaign that has a $450,000 budget this year. The seal will be featured on academic communications, Chancellor Smith said.
Texas Tech seal Designed in 1927 by campus master planner William Watkin. Formally adopted in 1953. The Saddle Tramps raised $24,750 in 1972 to fund the 37,500-pound granite seal at the main entrance of the campus. The monument will not be changed to reflect the new design, according to Chancellor David Smith.Source: Texas Tech Web site
The seal will replace the myriad symbols each college and program had developed and present a more uniform message, said Bill Dean, executive director of the Texas Tech Alumni Association.
"It's possible for someone to get four or five pieces of correspondence from different areas of Tech and they could all look different," Dean said. "So I think it's a step in the right direction to try and standardize this.
"As to whether they should change it or not," Dean said, "I think that's another question that probably needs to be revisited a little bit."
The modified seal must still be approved by the Tech Board of Regents, which will meet next week.
Cotton bolls that form a cross in the middle of the school shield and represent the 10 cotton-producing counties around Tech were removed from the new design. Instead, a more general "vine-like" image will represent all of agriculture.
A granite monument to the seal erected at the main entrance of the campus in 1972 would not be changed to reflect the new design, Chancellor Smith said.
Several administrators admitted that they did not realize that the round, somewhat crudely drawn shapes splitting the school shield symbolized cotton.
The new design has a clearer symbol of agriculture, and the chancellor said it reflects that Tech is no longer a regional university but a system with seven campuses.
"You've got to decide that you're going to play in that larger sandbox," Smith said.
The changes were not acceptable, alumnus Eddie Smith said.
"Vines are weeds in my cotton fields," Smith said. "I think it's a mistake, and I wish they would ask the people who've supported the university through the years."
Speculation on the changes scattered throughout Lubbock and cyberspace Wednesday. Several alumni were baffled that the changes would be made with little public input.
"Change is inevitable," said Don Harris, a Lubbock appraiser and Tech alumnus. "On the other hand, if it isn't broken, why fix it?"
W.B. "Dub" Rushing, a long-time Tech contributor, said he had no problems with the changes as long as they were for a positive reason.
The school has weathered strong reactions to other changes, such as a proposal to call the school Texas Tech and the recent revisions on the Double T logo, he said. But administrators should be careful about change for change's sake, he said.
"I don't see anything wrong with the present seal," Rushing said. "If it would only make the alumni mad, and that's where their gifts come from - all you have to do is kill off a dozen people and that could be $12 million."
More Tech faithful, including cotton farmers, would warm to the new design once they understood why the changes were being made, Chancellor Smith said.
The outcry Wednesday showed that people cared about the university, but the controversy was overblown, he said.
"A lot of people had a lot of extra time today," Smith said. "It was kind of ridiculous." OLD:
NEW:
To comment on this story:
elliott.blackburn@lubbockonline.com 766-8722
brian.williams@lubbockonline.com t 766-8717
Good point. I'm still trying to figure out how the new seal is a better representation of agriculture, but what do I know? I'm an Aggie. Gig'em!
Insanity! My relatives chopped cotton, as did the relatives of many of my friends. It's what people did to provide for their families. The proponents of this stupid idea need to head North where their rewrite of history will be appreciated and celebrated by their own kind.
And when those "general vine-like images" bolls get rotten,
You can't pick any more "general vine-like images"
In them ol' "general vine-like images" fields back home.
Nope, sorry, it's not going to work.
Read "Born Fighting" if you get the chance. Learn about the people who are backbone of traditional America. THe Scots-Irish. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0767916883/102-9820260-2374530?v=glance
you're right about the cross, though I've just noticed that myself
Looks more like crossed olive branches to me . . . as on the Cypriot flag or the UN flag . . .
Whatcha wanna bet it's a UN plot?
There was a thread about it on FR, listing among them folks like Rosa Parks and MLK which some people too offense to. I don't get it though. BTW, after the independence of Trinidad, Scotsmen and Irishmen cut sugarcane with the best of them. Some people have this idea that anyone white never work hard because of white skin privilege. A lot of that privilege went out the window with being of an Irish background in this country anyway. It's hard to believe, but my mom meets a lot of Irish families who've been here forever and don't like America.
They do form a definite cross. Wonder if it was intentional.
What were the Tech regents smoking the day they hired a lefty chancellor? Bobby Knight should have finished him off last year at the United salad bar. Cotton pays the ever-increasing tuition bills for a sizable chunk of Tech's students. You'd think this clown would have more to do than having an AUSTIN firm redesign the seal. I'm surprised they don't have the gay rainbow flag on the new one.
>>Some background: The TTU Chancellor is a big lib. His wife, Dr. Donna Bacchi, is responsible for banning smoking in restaurants in Lubbock, and attempted to pass a CAT-LEASHING law a couple of years ago.<<
She's the one who should be leashed and muzzled.
These PC revisionists should understand that history can't be "cleaned up". Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, etc. will stay in the history books forever unless, of course, the libs take charge. They probably wipe out references to Hitler and Saddam and magnify Stalin!
Libs: get it through the vacuum between your ears; you can't DELETE history!
Educratic slight of hand..."We're not really ACCOMPLISHING anything by removing the cotton, we just want to LOOK like we are!"
(and spending wads of someone else's money in the process, I might add)
Definitely not! The fire would contribute to global warming as would the savage, clear-cut stripping of vegetation from the fig tree forest. Tie off the sleeves of your tees and use them over and over as grocery bags, thus saving us from burial under tons of paper or plastic bags.
Hey! It's not my fault. Get off my general vine like images pickin' case, will ya?
nice try though...
Texas Tech may have bigger problems - no?
David Smith and Donna Bacchi sound like a couple of boll weevils. No statue for these two.
Cotton was King and Buddy Holly would sing. Lubbock was quite different in the late fifties. I was born into a farm family in Post, just south of Lubbock - caprock,oil fields, cotton, tornadoes, hail and dust storms in a dry county.
Keep the cotton in the T-Tech Seal.
Every time Smith's in the news, it's an embarrassment. As for stripping the cotton from the seal, just a month ago Tech announced groundbreaking work in cotton textiles >>>
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
New anti-bacterial, anti-chemical wipe win-win deal for West Texas
BY JOHN DAVIS
Lubbock AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
The fabric of our lives may help save lives in the war against chemical and biological weapons.
Scientists at Texas Tech University's Institute of Environmental and Human Health unveiled a new cotton fabric wipe Monday that can neutralize these weapons from the human skin as well as machinery.
The project came out of the Admiral Elmo R . Zumwalt Jr. Program for Countermeasures to Biological and Chemical Threats.
Seshadri Ramkumar, an assistant professor at the institute who headed the program to develop the product, said the new fabric is a marriage of existing technologies.
The final product is called Non-particulate Sensitive Equipment CBW Decontamination Wipes.
The technique of creating the fabric isn't new, he said. Nor is using charcoal as an absorbent layer. However, sandwiching the charcoal between the cotton fabric is new and gives it an instantaneous absorption against chemicals.
"No one has used this technology for defense purposes," Ramkumar said. "It's kind of a marriage of the technologies."
Entire article at: http://lubbockonline.com/stories/040505/loc_040505034.shtml
Also, FWIW >>> http://www.universitydaily.net/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/05/03/4276e62c21a36
Because of a shortage of laborers and the destructiveness of sudden storms, cotton growers in the Lubbock area developed a means of rough-harvesting cotton during the 1920s. The first mechanical harvester consisted of fence posts attached to a draft animal and dragged between rows to dislodge the cotton. The method also broke off bolls, leaves, and sticks and mixed them in the fiber. A wagon or sled with an open groove down the center of the bed proved to be a better device. Horses or mules pulled the sled through the fields to harvest the cotton. Though these methods were faster, however, they both resulted in cotton with a high trash content that brought a much lower price than hand-picked or hand-snapped cotton. Mechanical strippers, which followed, pulled the boll off the plant by means of revolving rollers or brushes.
"A lot of people had a lot of extra time today," Smith said. "It was kind of ridiculous."
Make time today to tell Smith what's ridiculous >>>
DAVID R SMITH
CHANCELLOR
CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE
Phone: (806) 742-0012
Email: DAVID.SMITH@TTU.EDU
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