February 17, 2004
THE CREAM OF SUL ROSS SPEAKS (via The Mother Judd):
It's Home Stupid Home, but the 'Clods' Can Read (BARBARA NOVOVITCH, 2/17/04, NY Times)
The first indication that Dr. Larry J. Sechrest's neighbors and students had read his article titled "A Strange Little Town in Texas" was when he began receiving death threats and obscene phone calls and his house was vandalized.The article by Dr. Sechrest, an economics professor at Sul Ross State University, was published in the January issue of Liberty, a small libertarian magazine with a circulation of about 10,000 and only two local subscribers, one of whom is Dr. Sechrest. But it was weeks before people heard about it in remote Alpine, which is three hours from the closest Barnes & Noble, in Midland, Tex.
The article lauded the beauty of West Texas, the pleasant climate, the friendliness and tolerance of the locals. But Dr. Sechrest, who has a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Texas, also contended that "the students at Sul Ross, and more generally, the long-term residents of the entire area, are appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well, . . . just plain stupid."
Criticizing the academic standards at Sul Ross State University, part of the Texas State University system, he told of a student who, after graduation, typed a note to a favorite professor, saying, "Thank you for all your patients."
In the fall of 2002, his article said, "42 percent of our freshmen had to take remedial classes in reading, writing, or math just to meet the state's ridiculously low standard of `competence.' "
He added, "The taxpayers of Texas have already paid for these kids to learn English and math in middle school, then again in high school, much of which is a review of what they were supposed to have absorbed in previous years."
Dr. Sechrest wrote that he was "prepared to defend to the death the proposition that Sul Ross, and this area of Texas more generally, is the proud home of some of the dumbest clods on the planet."
He can certainly be forgiving for assuming that no one outside a computer cubicle reads a libertarian magazine. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 17, 2004 6:04 AM
It was a little reckless of Dr. Sechrest to vow to defend that proposition to the death. "To the loss of a limb" would have been more discreet.
Posted by: pj at February 17, 2004 9:30 AMPerhaps this is what one of my Western Civ students here in 'Bama meant when she recently referred to the "Bluebonnet Plague".
Posted by: H. D. Miller at February 17, 2004 9:42 AM
One of my favorite authors, humorist H. Allen Smith, spent his last years in Alpine...I can't imagine a guy like him settling amid a bunch of dummies...of course, he died a decade or two ago, so maybe this cloddity has emerged in recent years.