Editor’s note: From a change in automotive topography to Bibles and pornography, these are among our favorite quotes from the past several days.
“When [Bernard] Rapoport took an interest in something, he gave everything — his ideas, his vision, his energy and his money. He changed the lives of countless students, and he changed the University campus in countless ways.”
— President William Powers Jr. in a University statement on Rapoport, who passed away Thursday. Rapoport served as the chairman of the UT System Board of Regents from 1993-97. Among his contributions to UT include the Bernard and Audre Rapoport building and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the School of Law.
“As I was leaving his office, [Rapoport] told me I shouldn’t bother to wait for the information we had requested. He wasn’t responding. He had told his colleagues on the board to ignore The [Texas] Observer’s open records letters, that he would ‘take care of them.’ … The chairman of the UT Board of Regents was telling me he had violated the Texas open records law and directed the other regents to do the same. I told him I disagreed with him.”
— Lou Dubose, editor of The Washington Spectator and former editor of The Texas Observer, retelling the story of his first encounter in what became a friendship with Rapoport when the latter was chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, according to the Observer.
“The change in deanship here had no impact on the rankings. The surveys were already in the seals.”
— Stefanie Lindquist, interim dean of the School of Law, on whether the firing of former law school Dean Larry Sager in December had an impact on the school’s rankings, according to The Daily Texan. The law school made headlines last year when it became the first school ever to break into the coveted Top 14 of law schools, a group that has remained unchanged since the start of the rankings. However, UT dropped two 16th on the rankings this year.
“[The purpose of the event] is to send a message that the stuff in the Bible, and the Quran, and the Torah and all that sort of thing is, in our case worse, in our opinion worse, than pornography.”
— Kyle Bush, UT-San Antonio student and member of a university student organization, Atheist Agenda, which held its annual “Smut-for-Smut” campaign, in which students can bring their religious texts to the organization and exchange them for pornography, according to WOAI-TV in San Antonio.
“This looks like a very ambitious business proposal that is having trouble meeting its financial obligation.”
— Travis County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt on the new request from Circuit of the Americas officials to obtain $8 million in road funds from the county, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The Formula One track, currently under construction, has been the subject of much controversy for receiving millions in incentives from various levels of government.
