If graduate students want to keep their affordable housing along Lake Austin, it's time to put in their two cents.

At 1:30 p.m. this Friday, the Board of Regents will hear comments from the public about the future of the coveted Brackenridge Tract.

The student housing on the UT System-owned lands known as the Brackenridge Tract has been an oasis of sorts for graduate students for years. The land hosts 515 University apartments that are an inexpensive option for graduate students who juggle jobs as teaching assistants with coursework and intensive research, often while supporting or starting a family.

Although it's mainly reserved for graduate students, the housing is also open to married undergraduate students or undergraduate students with more than 30 credit hours. Because of these requirements, the apartments serve as a community for students with similar lifestyles. (Who would want to raise a kid in West Campus?) The price is also something unheard of in West Campus: a one-bedroom apartment at the Brackenridge Apartments only costs $489.95 per month, and rent for a one-bedroom at Colorado Apartments is only $519.95.

But that's what the land was intended for. When Col. George W. Brackenridge donated the 503 acres of land along the Colorado River to the University, he did so "for the benefit of the University of Texas" - and in the hope that it could one day become the site of the main University campus. After Brackenridge's death in 1920, the Board of Regents brought his idea to the Texas Legislature, which then vetoed a relocation of the main UT campus. In 1963, the University concluded that it would never be able to move the entire campus to the site along the river. So, the Board decided to maintain the area for student housing, research, recreational athletics and other non-academic activities.

And thus it remains today - or at least until the University selects an outside planning firm to analyze the best use of the land for University purposes. This and other recommendations come from the task force appointed by the UT Board of Regents to make changes to the tract. One of the most troubling of these suggestions: "The sections of the Brackenridge Tract now occupied by the Colorado and Brackenridge Apartments would be more beneficially utilized as part of a new master plan developed to produce significant funds to support the educational mission of the University."

Simply put: the University will throw out the graduate students and bring in the corporate money-makers. Would Brackenridge approve of this selling out of his land meant for a UT campus? We can't say for sure.

What we do know is that if the University wants its graduate schools to be more competitive in the national arena, it should make every attempt to lower the graduate student cost of living in the ever-more-expensive city of Austin. The University should not, quite literally, pull the rug out from under students' feet.

The Board of Regents typically allows about three minutes per speaker and anyone can approach the board. To speak at the meeting or provide written commentary directly to the Board of Regents, e-mail your written request no later than Nov. 7 to bor@utsystem.edu or mail it to the Office of the Board of Regents, 201 W. Seventh St., Suite 820, Austin, TX, 78701.

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