Galveston County Daily News, Jan. 18, 2008
Laura Elder raises the question in her Between the Lines blog about why rumors about UTMB moving to Austin remain so persistent.
UTMB rumor making rounds
By Laura Elder That rumor about the University of Texas Medical Branch packing up its little black bags and moving to Austin is as persistent as a rash. And it's flaring up again."It's not moving to Austin," said spokeswoman Marsha Canright. "We do have student and resident programs in Austin, and have so for many dozens of years."So why won't this rumor go away?Could this old but interesting article have started it all?
Here's an intriguing little excerpt from the 2004 article in The Austin Chronicle:
"If there is one drawback to the site, they say, it's that it would not accommodate a larger expansion should UTMB decide to move its main campus to Austin from Galveston, where it dropped anchor over a century ago. Any such transfer would require much more than an act of the Legislature, however. "It would take doomsday to get UTMB out of Galveston," one doctor observed of the islanders' fierce determination to keep the medical school where 70% of Texas voters said it should go in an 1881 election. Way back when legislators first passed the bill to establish a UT medical school, the mandate specified that the school be located anywhere but UT's flagship city."
Even some medical students are spreading the rumor. Why do you think it won't go away?