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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12

@THEBATTONLINE

LIFE & ARTS

SPORTS

Four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consul general speaks at Annenberg Presidential Conference Center A3

After disappointing 2025 season, No. 25 A&M baseball begins with Tennessee Tech in Year 2 under Michael Earley A6

Proposed PVFA building put on pause

Steve Carrasco IV — THE BATTALION

Langford Architecture Center – Building C on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026.

By David Swope News Editor Texas A&M Interim President Tommy Williams ‘78 has removed a proposed building for the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, or PVFA, from the university’s list of approved projects, according to an email sent to PVFA faculty and staff obtained by The Battalion. The Center for Learning Arts and Innovation, or CLAI, was greenlit in September 2025 as part of the university’s 2026-2030 System Capital Plan in September 2025. First proposed with the college’s establishment in 2022, the CLAI was to serve as the college’s sole dedicated building, giving students 187,000 square feet of learning space spread across five stories. In the email, PVFA Dean Tim McLaughlin ‘90 told faculty that Williams did not believe the CLAI building to be an appropriate use of funds, with the building comprising $235 million of the Capital Plan. “Though [Williams] listened respectfully to my entreaties and arguments about the importance of the building to Texas A&M’s future, he was not swayed away from his decision,” McLaughlin wrote. “The university’s 2024 Capacity Study Report revealed a significant number of areas to be improved to serve the university’s current enrollment. … From this perspective, the CLAI’s cost relative to the number of students it would serve isn’t justifiable.” Currently, the majority of PVFA courses are taught in the Langford Architecture Center – Building C, which the college shares with architecture, construction science, land

and property development, landscape architecture and urban planning undergraduates. Students in PVFA claim Langford C does not provide the necessary space and amenities for the 3,100 undergraduates and graduates that use it. “[Langford C] is a very old building, and it cannot keep up with what we have to do technologically,” visualization senior Jayden Polk said. “We don’t have enough computers for every student to be working on during our classes, we have one elevator that is out of service probably every other week.” Polk not only claimed Langford C cannot maintain its current student capacity, but that it is also improperly maintained. She alleged broken air conditioning systems, office spaces

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Laughlin wrote. “I’ll be working with PVFA leadership to think through strategies.” No public information regarding the removal of the CLAI from the list of approved projects existed when McLaughlin wrote to PVFA faculty and staff. Assistant Vice President of Institutional Reputation Management Tim Eaton told The Battalion in a request for comment that Williams is currently focusing on other campus issues. “The president made the decision to pause construction of the proposed Center for Learning Arts and Innovation while members of the university’s leadership team evaluate several pressing needs across campus,” the statement reads. “This action does not affect

What we’re doing is beneficial and real, and it seems like people, leaders of this university don’t recognize or see that.

Jayden Polk Visualization Senior

that reach 90 degrees and aging wiring that caused an electrical fire her freshman year. “I walked into the bathroom, and I smelled a really strong plasticy, fuming smell,” Polk said. “Less than five minutes later, the fire alarm started going off.” The CLAI was set to address these issues while consolidating PVFA, spread out among a variety of buildings, into its own space. Now, McLaughlin says that the college may be forced to work with a fraction of the proposed funding. “President Williams recommended that I come back to him with ideas of what we would do with a portion, perhaps one quarter, of the previously promised funding,” Mc-

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Email obtained by The Battalion details sudden alleged funding cuts, temporary halt of CLAI’s construction

the funding of the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, nor construction of facilities supporting the Virtual Production Institute within the college.” McLaughlin sent a mass email to PVFA students on Feb. 6 officially notifying them of William’s decision to cut the CLAI from the list of approved projects. Attached was a letter from Chair of the Development Council of PVFA Cedric Sims ‘94 sent to McLaughlin, Williams, Chancellor Glenn Hegar ‘93 and Executive Vice President and Provost Alan Sams urging university administrators to reconsider the CLAI’s importance and viability. The letter details PVFA’s existing growth

plans and emphasizes the college’s importance at A&M. The letter formally asks that the university administration reinstates the CLAI and offers assistance from PVFA administrators in crafting an alternate course of action that allows the CLAI to be constructed. “We fully acknowledge the capacity challenges faced by the university but believe quantity must be supported by quality,” the letter reads. “… We ask for your partnership not only as PVFA supporters, but because we are Texas A&M supporters. Like an engineering lab, animal lab or chemistry lab, CLAI is not just a building; it is a convening and creation environment where invention, innovation and creativity take place.” While the CLAI has been removed from the list of approved projects, university administration emphasizes that the decision is only temporary. However, it is unknown how long that pause may be. “Essentially, this was a carrot dangled on a stick for us,” Polk said. “ … The statement of purpose of A&M is to be a university for innovation and growth, and you can’t say that and then turn around and shut down technological innovation and growth.” In recent years, PVFA has seen significant growth and advancement. As of in 2022, through the joining of dance science, performance and visual studies and visualization, the college now boasts five undergraduate degrees, five graduate programs and 12 minors. The college also operates the state-of-theart Virtual Production Institute at A&M-Fort Worth and is the No. 1 animation school in Texas and No. 2 in public animation schools nationally. Polk says it’s these strides PVFA continues to make that cements its place at A&M. “It’s not just arts and crafts, I think there’s a misconception around what visualization is,” Polk said. “ … What we’re doing is beneficial and real, and it seems like people, leaders of this university don’t recognize or see that.”

PEN America holds academic freedom panel Speakers discuss importance of free speech in classrooms

By Taryn Stilson News Reporter PEN America, an organization for writers, artists and journalists that defends free expression, led an open-panel discussion at Rudder Tower on Feb. 10. The event, titled “Free Expression and Academic Freedom: Where do you stand?” amassed an audience of Texas A&M students, staff, faculty and College Station community members. Before the panelists began their discussion, an introductory message was read. “Prohibiting access to books, music, art, movies or even ideas, and the threats censorship poses to academic freedom, and the pursuit of truth is not unique to this present moment, nor is it unique to any political party,” said PEN America consultant, Senior Public Relations and Communications Executive Malka Mar-

golies. Margolies recited Heinrich Heine’s prophetic 1823 quote which reads, “That where they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.” “[This] should haunt all of us,” Margolies said. “My hope is that today’s panel discussion can help us open this conversation about censorship, campus free speech and academic freedom, not so that we agree, because that would be boring, but so that we might get closer to a deeper and richer understanding of the complex issues that are central to this topic.” The discussion was organized by PEN America’s Freedom to Learn Program Director Amy Reid, Ph.D., in response to recent policy revisions approved by the A&M University System Board of Regents requiring campus CEOs to sign off on course syllabi that “advocate race and gender ideology.” Following Margolies’ opening statement, moderator Jonathan Friedman, Systems Managing Director of PEN America’s U.S. Free

Expression Programs, introduced each member of the panel: George Packer, contributing writer for The Atlantic and member of PEN America Board of Trustees, Graham Piro from the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, Sandra Cisneros, 2015 National Medal of Arts winner, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, Emmy award-winning writer and social justice attorney and Jennifer Finney Boylan, former president of PEN America. Before posing his first question to the panelists, Friedman called attention to distinct differences between current events and former instances of censorship. “What we are seeing now [is] the force of government and the fear that can instill in all of us to obey in advance, and stay away from any red lines, trickle down.” Friedman said. “ … I am so intrigued to be here at Texas A&M, because the first conference room in the conference center I saw was [named] ‘Freedom.’ So how do you have a university that intertwines itself with the notion of freedom, then simultaneously says there are

all these topics that you can’t talk about.” Boylan began the panel discussion, breaking the ice with an enthusiastic “Howdy.” “A book opens a door, stories open doors to other worlds, to different ways of understanding the world,” Boylan said. “ … They take us to a different place and they give us the sense of what it’s like to be people who are not us. Sometimes we meet each other through story, and I think there is nothing to be afraid of in a book that shows you something you don’t want to see. In some ways that’s the whole point of your education, if you spend four years anywhere and you are the same person at the end of four years that you were when you entered that institution, your education has failed.”

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