COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Texas A&M University is setting the record straight about renovations planned for restrooms for the Corps of Cadets.
The university is spending just over $3 million to upgrade one restroom in each of the dorms that are designated for males or females.
Texas A&M’s clarification comes on the heels of an editorial shared this week by The Rudder Association that the university insists is flat-out “wrong.”
The editorial claims that A&M is spending 23 times the actual amount on facilities designed to meet “European standards” and suggests that the renovations were part of a plan to satisfy gender identity issues that have surfaced in recent years.
Texas A&M shared the following statement with KBTX:
“The Rudder Association is wrong: no one is spending $72M on restroom renovations. As part of our due diligence, we did develop an optional long-term plan that, if executed, would have cost $72M. We chose not to execute that plan. That level of funding would have required the university to go to The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents for formal approval, and that did not happen. Instead, we are spending $3.1M to renovate one restroom in each of the four dorms. The restrooms being renovated are designated as either male or female – not gender-neutral. Any consideration of additional renovations in the future would be dependent on feedback from our cadets, as well as funding availability. It would also require a new, separate decision process.”
The Rudder Association is a group of A&M alumni that has no official affiliation with the university.
This marks the second time this week that Texas A&M has had to publicly address inaccurate statements shared by conservative-based groups on the web.
On Tuesday, Chancellor John Sharp went before lawmakers to address what he called an inaccurate post written by Texas Scorecard that was then shared by Governor Greg Abbott.
The story remains published with no corrections or retractions by Texas Scorecard and the Governor has not removed his social media post that threatened A&M with losing funding.
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