Newly-elected City of Brownsville mayor Juan "Trey" Mendez (fourth from left) ran the last meeting of his nine-year tenure on the Texas Southmost College board before he is sworn in as mayor July 2.
By Juan Montoya
It was February 17, 2011.
Juan "Trey" Mendez had been elected to a six-year term as a Texas Southmost College trustee only the year before. But on that day, the meeting of the community college trustees was held at the TSC Fine Arts Center because it was expected that an overflow crowd was expected that would not fit in the board meeting room Gorgas Hall.On the agenda, the seven trustees were going to decide whether the community college would remain in the "partnership" with the University of Texas System as a hybrid UTB-TSC, or to return to its original mission as an independent community college as it had been 20 years before.
The Fine Art Center was full of pro "partnership" partisans that had aligned with former UTB-TSC President Juliet Garcia. Only a continent of pro-community college wearing "Save TSC" T-shirts lined the very back of the cavernous auditorium.
Everyone though that new trustee Mendez was the weak link in the foursome (Kiko Rendon, Adela Garza, Rene Torres and Mendez) who favored the independent community college. The pressure was on him to go along with the three who favored staying in the partnership and transferring the assets of the college to the UT System, in other words, to dissolve it.
Days before, the pressure had been applied on Mendez. A priest close to Garcia had gathered scores of students and pro-partnership adherents and marched on his law office. He threatened to "destroy" Mendez personally and professionally. The banking community and important political figures including the state representative and the state senator favored dissolving it.
So when Mendez made the motion in front of the pro-partnership mob to "preserve" the community college, the crowd exploded with a roar.
"All hell broke loose," Mendez recalled Thursday during his last day as a TSC trustee days before he is sworn in as the new mayor of the city of Brownsville. Fittingly, his last meeting as trustee was helad at the Fina Arts center, too.
"People came up to the stage and called us all kinds of nasty things. Only the small group in the back of the center cheered. I confess that it was me who funded the purchase of the 'Save TSC' t-shirts."
In turn, each member of the board shared an anecdote of their time with Mendez on the board, from Garza, who was there the nine years he was there, to Eva Alejandro, the newest board member. Each expressed their belief that Mendez would carry the same determination and perseverance in his term as mayor Brownsville.
TSC President Dr. Robert Rodriguez said he had decided to come to TSC after he saw the sense of community among the board members and said that the community college that Mendez saved was now on its way to return to its former glory.
Enrollment is at its all-time high since it achieved independence, Rodriguez said. Today, it is the fastest growing community college in Texas, and it is offering more and more opportunities to students in the community.
Mendez, in turn, said that he wanted to return TSC to its original mission, to lower tuition for students from university-level to make it affordable to local students, and to take it back to the level of greatness it had been.
"When I was growing up as a kid in Brownsville I never thought I would ever be a trustee, or for that matter mayor of the city. I has been a dream come true. I will only be a phone call away."