N Judah

They could have backed down because they weren't against density per se, they were against density that hurts resale value. There exists density that helps, not hurts, resale value. The real question is whether or not the angry neighbors know this.

No, but the point is that whether or not density could "fit in", the local residents did fear that the proposal would damage the quality of the neighborhood and hurt resale values.

Well, that's what I"m saying...there could be options that work out for everybody. Situations involving development of high-rises/density/whatever aren't always zero-sum games, but apparently someone has convinced that crowd that that is the case.

There are some really pretty, dense buildings along Bissonnet (right near where this high rise is supposed to go). In particular I like the collection of white townhome-style buildings. I can understand the fear, given other high rise disasters, but there's no reason density in and of itself is unable to fit in with a particular neighborhood.

That area's already pretty dense. I think it makes sense to put a high rise there.

In San Diego it used to be legal to drink beer on the street. I think that in Europe you can drink beer on the street if you feel like it. When I lived in California I did that all the time. However, I have never seen anyone do it in Houston.

can't I just call it ethnic pride or a desire to socially interact with my culture like so many others can?

Sure but you don't have to denigrate everybody else's ethnicity/culture to do it.

It's doesn't really matter. The quality of the education itself doesn't change when the name changes.

I don't mind the name but I think it should be "college" instead of "university." It just sounds better and seems more accessible.

No...east. Under 59, on the other side of the freeway from the mall.

Maybe "nice" is the wrong word. But I like it, and only another couple of miles and you're in Bellaire. Anyway, I think Sharpstown's perceived dangerousness is overstated. If I were in charge I'd just turn it into an office park or something and not worry too much about the surrounding area.

Along Bellaire once you cross over 59 is really nice, imho.

Memorial mall is surrounded by very high "disposable income" households.

Yes, you don't even have to go a mile East/SE before it gets very nice. But "surrounded" ? Have you ever been north of Interstate 10?

Yes, it is absolutely correct that I am incredibly biased against degree mills superimposed on top of football factories.

in your mind most large public schools are bad, but in the mind of everyone else the world over many large public schools are very good which is why no matter what ranking method or who does the rankings these schools fair very well and also why recruiters from top companies flock to them for graduates

I think Michigan, Wisconsin, UCLA, TAMU, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State, Arizona and many more would disagree with you

if anyone could be looked at as a joke it would be smaller east coast private schools that are well known for grade inflation

I know your opinion carries a lot of weight in the world of academia, but rankings published from Shanghai, to London, to the USA consistantly have UT as one of the top US universities and as one of the top public universities in the world.....and I have my doubts that anyone in London or China was so marveled by Vince scrambling to the right at the final seconds that they elevated their rankings of UT

and all the large public schools mentioned above are members of the AAU.....and I think the collective minds of the AAU know what a quality university is VS you on HAIF

Wow. I don't know what to say...

No...UT is a joke. Most large public schools are pretty bad, but UT is known for being the worst.

EDIT: Actually, I'll give high school counselors credit for being idiots. Not all of them know that about UT, but they really should.

Read through this thread. There are a lot of people that have applied to the wrong school (I almost did that, when I moved to Houston from out of town and didn't know the difference between UH and UHD). It is a problem for both students and for employers; and when employers are confused it is going to tend to hurt the graduates from the better school (like me) and help the ones from the lesser school.

Er...I'm sorry you were confused (did you try looking on the internet?), but I don't think it is an issue for most people. Even if there is a certain subset of employers who don't know their way around town I don't think it's very significant. Anybody who needs to know the difference already knows, and anybody who is unaware can be told in 30 seconds or less. The most important thing to remember is that neither school is typically thought of as being better than the other in any meaningful way, and the UH-D students mentioned in that survey are deluded if they think that it is a boon to be confused with students from UH-Main Campus.

...and you aren't going to have very many more people wanting to go to a school until the school becomes perceived as more exclusive.

Exclusivity for the sake of exclusivity is a noble goal, and if that is your interest there are many, many schools for that (almost too many).

Focusing on the really motivated students doesn't garner a great deal of recognition among really motivated potential students whose first choice is currently UT-A, A&M, or a better out-of-state university.

Yes, it does. UT-Austin is a degree mill superimposed on top of a football factory if not for Plan II, and every high school counselor in Texas knows this. Soon it could be the same for U of H.

Historically, what you're saying is true; UH has not been about the perception of exclusivity. However I want that to change so that the earning power and social status associated with my UH degrees go up.

That would be quite a cultural shift. I think you just went to the wrong school.

Let the ESL students, poor children of immigrants, and knuckleheads like I was go to HMU or HCC for a couple of years.

Is that what you did?

If they're good enough, UH can then take them as transfer students. I see nothing wrong with that. And by filtering out more of the riff raff from the student population, more people will prefer UH as their first choice. I guarantee that application levels would increase.

I understand the desire to make UH better but for my part I would prefer U of H be improved in more substantial ways instead of by simply attempting to be more exclusive. Blaming UH's perceived lack of prestige on UH-Downtown was absurd to me at first, but what do I know? Now that the albatross that is UH-D has been jettisoned I guess UH is on the make. UTEP and SFA had better look over their shoulders.

You overestimate the worldliness of a college freshman at an open enrollment school.

No, the students aren't the ones getting confused by the name change, remember? It's the supposed employers who apparently can't tell the difference between UH and UH-D, or "City College" and "Community College." It's true that it might be a lot to expect from people around here, but people in many other places do not have problems distinguishing "City College" from "Community College."

"Houston Metropolitan University" is not bad but people will have to avoid shortening the word "Metropolitan" lest others think they are going to college to learn how to drive a bus.

And UH won't have a name worthy of distinguishment until it starts tightening admissions standards and distancing itself from lower-echelon institutions. Open enrollment at UH has a bleak future, btw.

It's not easy to just "tighten admissions standards." You have to have significantly more people wanting to go to a school than there are available spots. That will not happen for a while.

At the undergrad level the best thing a public school like U of H can do is focus on the really motivated students (ie Honors College) and make sure they are able to get the internships, letters of rec, or whatever to accomplish whatever it is they want. This can be done irrespective of general university enrollment standards.

nothing wrong with that IMO, but the business minor might be an issue because of the harder admissions to Bauer College at UH

Actually the business minor is separate from Bauer admissions. Anyone can do it as long as they have a 2.75 overall GPA or something like that.

I'm not sure I agree. UH reminds me of the French universities (as far as I understand them): anyone can get in. But it's really tough to make it, once you're there. I like the idea of giving lots of students the chance to succeed, especially in a city like Houston with so many immigrants and children of immigrants. But once you get in, you have to be a fairly serious student to make it. So there's a high attrition rate. I don't know what all that does for the reputation of the school, but it should mean that someone with a degree from UH worked pretty hard to earn it, and therefore the degree means something.

I agree. Prestige is great if that's your reason for going to school, and there are schools for that, but I don't think perception of exclusivity is really what U of H is all about.

I'm talking about undergrad, where supposed "name confusion" might occur. UH-D doesn't even have grad/professional schools.

Actually my idea was "U of H - City College." There are many schools called "City College" and nobody seems to get them confused with community colleges.

HMU gives the impression that the place is somewhere in between a community college and a reputable Tier One institution.

That's right about where U of H is too. Neither school has a "name" factor that warrants worrying about other schools tarnishing its rep.

Anyway I am just glad they're keeping open enrollment.

Not everybody goes to school for the "name."

If employers don't understand U of H v. UH-D then that's their problem. They can just find someone (anyone) from either school to explain it.

"Houston Metropolitan University" makes it seem somehow...inaccessible. I liked "City College" better.

Memorial City was never close to being in an area as bad as Sharpstown Mall....and sticking your head in the sand has never done much as well

The mall itself used to be much worse...and the area north of I-10 was about as bad as Sharpstown is now.

Obviously none of you have been in town long enough to have seen the turnaround at Memorial City. Trust me, all the malingering in the world won't improve an area, no matter how you feel about anybody else.

nothing will make a difference until you address the "people" that "bez chillin der"....until that is cleaned up no one will want to come near there for anything

I don't think so. Memorial City was once the same way but remodeling encouraged the gangstas to go elsewhere.

Or, perhaps pro-choicers do not feel compelled to fit into a monolithic group and be told how to think. Kind of interesting how you praise pro-life groupthink in your first sentence, and accuse pro-choicers of being cowed into groupthink in your second sentence. Left out is the distinct possibility that I (and others) do not think you have any say so in my personal affairs. Also left out is the possibility that you and other pro-lifers are wrong. The ferventness of your beliefs is not the yardstick by which correctness is measured.

No...I accounted for that possibility. I'm not forcing you to arbitrarily draw any particular line other than whatever one you want to draw regarding whatever you happen to think are your "personal affairs."

What I'm saying is that your "freedoms" and "choices" operate within the bounds of constraints. Whatever reasons you have for not wanting to have a child are the product of others' aggregate decisions which make up society. If you're a wage-slave/veal with no hope for the future then your "decision" is essentially made for you. A society with many such people will see many such "choices." Ideally no one should actually have to "choose" between betraying their sole biological purpose for the sake of, say, making middle management happy.

I'd rather that a billion zygotes be aborted than that one unwilling woman is forced to carry her pregnancy to term because some philosophically-consistent zealot is offended.

Hrm...actually, it is really my fault that you so completely fail to understand my point. I wish I were better at expressing myself. Sorry!

The pro-lifers are philosophically consistent, while the pro-choicers are (at best) opportunistic/arbitrary and (at worst) eugenecists who are too cowardly to be open about their true beliefs.

Anyway my perspective on the subject is that abortion is symptomatic of larger societal ills. It's an indicator of how cowed/whipped people are to believe that it's not feasible to complete their sole biological mission. Instead they allow themselves to believe that it's somehow better to be somebody else's veal, caged and only useful for purposes of extraction of labor, blindly accepting of the constraints placed upon them by others.

Society is made better off by allowing Jews to go about their lives within the economy than to have them slaughtered like cattle.

I don't know how you could possibly know that for sure.

What is clear is that there are conditions when killing someone is appropriate and even preferable. Attempts to define those conditions will always be controversial, but I cannot think of a single culture in which a concept of the sanctity of human life was enforced without exception.

Thankfully, that doesn't preclude such a society from ever being able to exist.

They need a cowboy hat store to appeal to tourist conventioneers.