Access Denied

During the first semester of UTRGV, Gael Garza tried to enter the Texas Southmost College Recreation Center in Brownsville, but was told he could not because he only took classes in Edinburg.

“At that point, I was, you can say, furious but at the same time I felt a little bit of segregation,” said Garza, a criminal justice graduate student who lives in Brownsville and has been denied access two times since then. “I felt like I was being classified as an [Edinburg] student instead of an actual [UTRGV] student, where the both campuses are supposed to be one. Instead, they still are acting as two different entities.”

Earlier this semester, Garza spoke to Alondra Galvan, Student Government Association vice president for the Brownsville campus, about being rejected from the TSC Recreation Center.

As a member of the UREC committee on campus, Galvan presented Garza’s issue to the committee.

The former UREC director told Galvan that it is true, students who take all classes in Edinburg cannot use the facility because of the agreement the university has with the college.

Galvan also said that as a committee, they talked about amending the agreement but the director said they, as a committee, cannot amend it.

No other students have approached Galvan about the issue, she said.

TSC shares its Recreation Center with UTRGV’s Brownsville campus community. Students of both schools pay a $75 recreation fee each semester.

A UTRGV student’s recreation fee goes to the university’s facility in Edinburg or the TSC Rec Center in Brownsville, depending on where he or she takes courses.

Students who take all of their classes in Edinburg pay the maintenance and operation costs of the University Recreation Building in Edinburg and can only use that facility because of a non-binding letter of intent regarding exchange of land and improvements and lease of improvements between the University of Texas System and TSC.

The recreation fee for students who take all or at least one class in Brownsville goes to the TSC facility. These students can use both rec centers, said Annette Livas, associate director of Wellness and Recreational Sports for University Recreation.

Livas said she has started speaking with Vicenta Fernandez, director of the TSC Recreation Center, about opening access to UTRGV students who take all courses in Edinburg but live in Brownsville.

For students in situations such as Garza’s, Livas said she would like to handle them on a case-by-case basis.

If TSC would allow entry to students who take all classes in Edinburg but live in Brownsville, “we would somehow work out an agreement, and this agreement would obviously be done by upper administration,” she said.

During Fall 2015, more than 6,000 UTRGV students paid the recreation fee to the TSC Recreation Center, Livas said.

Every month, the Recreation Center receives about 14,000 visits. Sixty-four percent of those visits are from UTRGV students and 36 percent are TSC students, according to Edgar Chrnko, TSC director of Marketing and Community Relations.

In the non-binding letter of intent signed in 2013, before the creation of UTRGV, UT System and TSC agreed the college-owned Recreation Center would be shared by UT Brownsville and TSC.

The letter of intent states TSC will permit all UT students­­ enrolled at the Fort Brown and
International Technology, Education and Commerce Center (ITECC) “physical campuses or other UT Brownsville campus facilities built in or near Brownsville to access the Recreation Center.”

Livas said it is important to note that the agreement did not take into consideration students who are going to be taking classes on both campuses or even multiple campuses.

“You can tell that certain situations were not addressed,” she said. “It is our hope that this agreement would be re-addressed with UTRGV in mind.”

In November 2004, voters in the Southmost Union Junior College District approved a $68 million bond issue to finance the construction of several buildings, including a kinesiology building. In March of that year, UTB/TSC students passed a referendum to assess themselves a fee to build a recreation center. When the programming process for both buildings took place, university officials and architects realized the items in both projects were similar and decided to build them as one facility, according to an article in the April 4, 2005, of The Collegian.

The amount of the bond issue was $13,655,000, according to an email from Chrnko. Annual debt service ranges from $360,000 to $935,000 with interest of 3.5 percent to 5 percent. To date, $3,800,000 has been paid off and it is estimated the debt will be paid off in August 2030.

The annual payment to TSC by the UT System “shall be sufficient to pay UT’s share of the remaining annual debt service on the bonds,” according to the letter of intent.

This number is calculated each year based on the number of UT students attending classes at the Brownsville campus divided by the total enrollment of TSC students and UT students attending classes in Brownsville, the letter of intent states.

Livas explained that at this time UREC does not have a formal campaign informing students about how this agreement can affect their access to the facilities but staff plan to attend Student Government Association and student orientation meetings.

UREC staff members in Brownsville are housed in the Garza Gym on the TSC campus, but Livas said they hope to have at least one office in the TSC Recreation Center in the near future.

For more information about the Recreation Center, call UREC at 882-7176 or 665-7808.