Heather Detrixhe
Managing Editor
A judicious authority has been called in to settle the dispute surrounding the controversial affiliation between Texas A&M University and South Texas College of Law.
The law school filed a suit Monday against the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to obtain a ruling as to whether or not the contract is legally sound.
"This dispute was moved from the political arena to the legal arena when the Coordinating Board chairman requested an Attorney General's opinion on the legality of the agreement," said President of South Texas and Dean Frank T. Read.
According to a press release issued by South Texas, the law school is asking that the issue be decided before an unbiased judge, who will examine all the evidence produced, possibly hear witnesses and make a judgment according to the law.
"We don't believe an advisory opinion (from an attorney general) is the solution," Read said.
The affiliation agreement, which was announced in January, has been the target of complaints from state law schools such as Texas Southern University and the University of Houston.
UH is mostly concerned with a private institution using the name of a public funded university, said UH Law Center Dean Stephen Zamora.
The agreement states that "state funding will not go directly to (South Texas), but it will be reflected in its affiliation with A&M." Zamora said.
Complaints such as this raised the question of whether or not the affiliation should have been approved by the Coordinating Board before the contract was signed.
The agreement was designed to give A&M a long-coveted law school and South Texas national name recognition, said South Texas Public Relations Manager Sheila Hansel. Though the contract was already slated for review by the board this summer, the lawsuit may make that unnecessary if the judge decides the contract is sound. The move was an assertion of confidence by the law school.
Hansel said, "We have no reason to expect a judgment against (the contract)."
No hearing date has been set and no judge has been assigned to the case. The board has 20 days in which to respond.
In January, Zamora also told The Cougar that this action "clearly requires getting approval of the American Bar Association and they have not yet done so."
The ABA visited the school in April to inspect the facilities and hear a presentation of the agreement. Their decision of whether or not to accredit the school under the new affiliation will be handed to the school on April 27. Though the ABA acknowledged the resistance, Hansel said, they will not likely take it into consideration while making their decision. "What (the ABA) is concerned with is the quality of the law school," Hansel said. "What we have done here in no way affects the quality of what students are taught."