Talk:Texas A&M University/Archive 1

message: Do US News and World Report rankings have a place in an encyclopedia article?  I'm going to eliminate some of the more glaring NPOV errors; I suggest that others be amended or sources cited for things like rankings.  I love A&M, but I would hardly feel justified in saying that she was "known as one of the most prestigious" universities in the nation...--Calebbell 20:25, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Rankings

message: The Traditions section is formatted all weirdly.  Bullet items should just continue with the first paragraph, not indent another level.  I came here  trying to squash merge requests, but if I get back to it I'll consider reformatting.  Sympleko 19:08, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formatting 

message: The endowment appears to not have been updated for 2005. Might someone update it in the article, and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_colleges_and_universities_by_endowment
Thanks for any help.
66.65.76.15 03:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Endowment

message: You need a picture of the Aggie Ring.  I don't know where to get a properly-licensed one.  Any Aggie Wikipedians want to snap one? Sympleko 19:14, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aggie Ring 

message: This article is getting very very long int he middle when discussing Texas A&M traditions.  I suggest, as someone did before, that this section be summarized on this page and the bulk of the content moves to a new page, such as Texas A&M University traditions.  Overall, I think once this is done, a true overhaul of this page can be completed.  It is not hard to turn a large University's page into a featured article; I think we should try that here, starting with this change. -Scm83x 11:15, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate article on TAMU traditions and jargon 

message: We have to try to minimize the number of external links on this page, and all others.  Links should be limited to those that apply directly to the school, not alumni forums.  Please refrain from adding anymore of these links. -Scm83x 06:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: I am completely removing the claims around National Merit. Texas A&M doesn't even rank in the top three of Texas, much less on any national list. See the 2005 numbers as posted on the University of Florida Website: http://www.honors.ufl.edu/news/meritsandachievements2005.html
If someone wants to keep the claims up, please cite evidence from somewhere! Dothivalla 22:56, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  National Merit Claims 

message: I am removing the ranking claims from the page. The only citation is for a Forbes Ranking, yet the link points to a US News ranking. US News has A&M ranked 32, behind UT at 18. The "best B School in Texas" myth is left without any support. See: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba/brief/mbarank_brief.php
The gold standard for Business School rankings is the semi-annual Business Week list which has A&M neither ranked in the top 30 (Which includes UT), nor the top 50 (which includes Rice), but rather in the "also considered but not ranked" category. See: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/04/index.html
If someone would like to add A&M rankings for Business PLEASE CITE.Dothivalla 03:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Business School Claims 

message: According to A&M's own website some of the engineering claims are not valid. Please see: http://engineeringnews.tamu.edu/portal/page?_pageid=37,3428&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&p_news_id=1222
Specifically:
#Industrial Engineering is not top 5, It is currently ranked 7
#Neither Petroleum Engineering nor Nuclear Engineering are ranked by US News anymore
#Industrial Distribution is not ranked by US NewsDothivalla 03:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Engineering Claims 

message: A&M is a minority stakeholder in the PUF, but the article gives the impression that A&M is the majority stakeholder. I am changing the text to match the PUF wiki entry. Dothivalla 14:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  PUF Distribution Details 

message: The Academics section of the article states "Texas A&M University is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in the nation"
Many University entries include powerful statments to summarize the university's overall ranks. A NPOV requires that we base these statements off of real facts. As the top 5 schools in the US Wiki entries show, the facts will speak for themselves:
# Harvard: "is considered to be among the most prestigious universities in the United States and the world." Justifiable because Havard is ranked #1 by practically every ranking system known
# Princeton: "according to The Atlantic Monthly, it is the second most selective college in the United States."
# Yale: "less than 10 percent of the nearly 20,000 annual applicants to the undergraduate college have been offered admission"
# Penn: "has been recognized as a leader in the sciences, the humanities, architecture, engineering and education" This comes with a US News cite that says as much.
# Duke: "The 2006 edition of US News and World Report ranked Duke as the fifth best American college tied with Stanford."
As there is no cite for the "best university" statement, I am going to alter the first sentence of the Academics statement to be purely factual. This is consistent with the other entries.
Dothivalla 20:25, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is also consistent because the quote for what not to do in terms of "academic boosterism" was taken directly out of this article.  This article needs a huge edit to conform to NPOV policies. There is bad wikistyle all over, and academic boosterism abounds. Scm83x 23:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bolstered by Scm83x, I must say that large amounts of the Academics section are either out of date or irrelevent. The fastest growing campus back in 2002, or the number of study abroad students back in 1999 come to mind. None of these claims have any cites either, leading me to lean towards deleting them. If anyone wants these bullets to survive please CITE them and keep them relevent to the article.Dothivalla 08:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The fastest growing Uni claim is obviously no longer true. Enrollment has shrunk since the 2002 statistic came out. I am taking it out. Dothivalla 09:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Academics Section

message: None of the Architecture claims have any citations. Furthermore, the claims do not match the wiki page for the Architecture School. As the Architecture School's wiki casts doubt on whether the school is even accredited I am deleting the claims. If someone wants to put the claims back on PLEASE CITE.Dothivalla 09:10, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Architecture Claims 

message: The article claims that A&M has a top ten library. No citation is given.
# Princeton Review does not show A&M in the top five: http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankings.asp
# The 2001 rankings show A&M missing from the top 20: http://www.knox.edu/x996.xml
# A&M's own vision document shows A&M considers itself "unranked". See Page 8: http://www.tamu.edu/vision2020/baseline/baseline.pdf
I am removing the Claim.
:I am glad I removed the Claim. See the rankings here: http://www.libraryspot.com/lists/listlargestlibs.htm A&M ranks #91 Dothivalla 02:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Library Claims 

message: Currently the article states: "Kyle Field is considered by many to rank among the nation's premiere football facilities." I am replacing this line with "recently ranked as the fourth best college football stadium by the Sporting News." See: http://www.msnbc.com/modules/sports/collegefootballstadiums/ This is part of my overall effort at removing subjective claims from this page and replacing with factual ones. Dothivalla 16:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kyle Field Claims 

message: This article doesn't seem to mention anywhere that "A&M" stands for Agricultural and Mechanical.Rdore 05:49, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A&M does not actually stand for anything anymore. — Scm83x talk  07:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be mentioned as etymology though, otherwise the letters seem random. I thought I worked on a history section at one point, but it seems to be missing now? Stan 14:23, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it should be mentioned somewhere.  The "agricultural & mechanical" designation has historical significance in that it was one of a handful of A&M land grant colleges established specifically for promoting those disciplines. Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 16:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

text: This definitely needs to be included - I looked up this page specifically to find out where the A&M came from! icrutt 11:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, will add it in with the historical context noted. --Claygate 12:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "A&M" 

message: There seems to be some debate over whether the mascot is the Texas Aggie or Reveille. Although I suppose Texas Aggie is in some sense a mascot because it provides the team name, Reveille really is the official mascot of Texas A&M Unigersity.
:Yes, Reveille is the official mascot, at games and appearances, etc. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 21:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted an edit that changed this.  Something as follows might be appropriate if Reveille is the official mascot: Official mascot: Reveille, teams referred to as Texas Aggies. btm talk 09:21, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reveille

message: I propose that Texas A&M University College of Medicine be merged into this article. See Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages for more information. --AaronS 01:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's not much to merge, but there is plenty of room for expansion of the Texas A&M University College of Medicine article.  Individual colleges are notable enough to have their own article, so it should not be merged.  It's just that this one needs time to be expanded. btm talk 02:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point as some of the other sub-colleges of the Health Sciences Center such as Baylor College of Dentistry have more complete articles. --Claygate 00:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed merger

message: I put up a list (as you have likely noticed by this point), and if you feel the urge to take on a task, great. Mostly, though, I'm just looking for a complete list at this point. Where, really, do you think the article needs to be actually improved (as opposed to just patching up NPOV and uncited claims)? I'm hoping that a complete list will help us find a place to start, I suppose. --EdisonLBM 06:28, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  To Do List 

message: Hello, I was surprised that (1) this article makes no mention of the Aggie War Hymn and that (2) Wikipedia has no article on the Aggie War Hymn.  I know it is briefly mentioned at traditions of Texas A&M University, but it seems to me it is worthy of mentioning here, and also worthy of its own article.  Anyways, I noticed that Wikisource has the lyrics.  Therefore, I added  to the "traditions" article.  If the song makes it into this article, we may want to add that template here also. Johntex\talk 08:14, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Aggie War Hymn

message: What a pity ? 
Those scholars who wrote on TEXAS A & M failed miserably to explain what A & M stands for. Is there any explanation that it stands for Texas Agriculture and Mechanical University. What are the authors assuming about the readers that it is presumed everybody knew what A & M universtally stands for.
This is disappointing that scholar after scholar who wrote this page ignored this fact.
I say , put it as the first line.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.67.140.83 (talk • contribs) 08:29, 2006 March 31   (UTC)
*This is covered in the history section of the article.  Those letters formerly stood for Agriculter and Mechanical, but they no longer do.  Now they are just letters.  This is similar to AT&T, which used to stand for American Telephone and Telegraph, but now its just AT&T.  As the institutions outgrew the words the letters stood for, they threw away the words and just kept the letters. Johntex\talk 16:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Specifically, from the article: "The college opened for classes in 1876 as the "Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas". In 1963 the legislature change the name to "Texas A&M University" to reflect the expanded roles and academic offerings of the university." — Scm83x hook 'em 17:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is A & M ? 

message: The Texas A&M University bonfire disaster is used in university disaster management courses world-wide as a case study of urban heavy rescue and search and rescue methodology in general.  I do have some material that I could use to write an article.  Before starting I would like to hear some comments from the readers here as to whether it is a good idea.  --Drdan 20:49, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an existing article called Aggie Bonfire that discusses the event.  You could probably just add to that article, or if the material doesn't fit there then start a new one from that article. --Claygate 23:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I will have a look at it! --Drdan 07:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bonfire tragedy 

message: A separate athletics page should be up soon with the name "Texas Aggie Athletics." It's going to be in need of editing/expansion/deletion of the material if anyone is interested, but a decent outline of the page will be there to work with. When it's up, I will remove some of the unnecessary athletic material from this page (notably the conference titles list.)
--Texink 19:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent!  Well done, Texink! Johntex\talk 06:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Athletics page

message: I made a few photo changes, mainly decreasing their size to make them less dominating over the text. I also moved the Academic Building up to academics to have a more even distribution of photos across the entire article.
There was also a sentence about a specific fraternity that I removed. That seems to me to be a slippery slope; we can't mention every fraternity and sorority in this article.
I hope no one has a problem with the changes - if anyone does, please mention it.
-Texink 23:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the changes to the text - nicely done.  For the images, I reccommend not specifying a size unless there is a really compelling reason to do so.  The guideline on images is to ommitt the size parameter - this way, the user's preferences in their Wikipedia options will determine the size.  This allows the user to pick a default size suitable for thier monitor, their eyesight, etc.  Its a guideline, not a policy, but I think it is a good idea. Johntex\talk 00:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes

message: I wonder if "A Unique American Institution" is A&M's motto. This can be seen on the main website (www.tamu.edu). Does anyone know if it is? --Blueag9 16:03, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know if there's much of a difference, but that's more a slogan, used just for advertising. Doesn't really fit with other school's official mottos that mention education and light and all that jazz. -Texink 17:08, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Motto