Texas A&M Interim President addresses media, controversies for first time

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Texas A&M’s Interim President General Mark Welsh III spoke with the press for the first time since he was officially appointed to the role on Sunday.

The Texas A&M University System has had a turbulent summer at the flagship campus, but Welsh is hoping to ease concerns as the community prepares for the beginning of the fall semester. Welsh’s first priority; communication.

“Communicate, listen, get feedback,” said Welsh. “And make sure I understand what people think the problems and issues are or were. And [understand] where people think it’s working really well, because it is working really well in lots of areas.”

He then plans to look at the university’s “communications game plan” and fix whatever shortfalls there might be.

“And the third piece is to look at all the major moving parts for the last year and do a quick look assessment of how they’re doing,” Welsh said.

Some of the issues that have come up over the summer include the botched hiring of a journalism director and an A&M professor who was temporarily suspended after she criticized Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s policies on opioids while giving a lecture at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Both of these incidents are mired in controversy, with faculty, students and the public raising concerns about outside political influence.

Welsh has been a dean at the Bush School of Government and Public Service and when asked if there’s ever been any outside influence he experienced, he said absolutely not.

“First of all, it’s a Constitutional right under the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has confirmed that multiple times, so we believe in academic freedom here,” Welsh said. “Which means our professors are free to select the topics they need to discuss in the classroom while they’re teaching to fully explain issues to students. Whatever they realistically believe they require to explain these issues falls under academic freedom. And I’ll defend that with every breath.”

The interim president said one of the challenges the system faces is ensuring what happened over the summer doesn’t impact the recruitment of students and staff. He noted the school needs to be open and transparent about everything; including its relationship with the media and being open to the public.

“My experience has been, in many other organizations, is that the story is going to be told. I would much rather have the story include our perspective rather than not include our perspective. Whether it’s positive or negative, that doesn’t matter to me. I think [the relationship with the media], for an institution the size of Texas A&M is critically important. I’ll be available,” said Welsh.