I agree with Gates' statements about the importance of the press wholeheartedly and applaud this approach. I just wish he hadn't closed the journalism department at Texas' second largest university. The Texas A&M journalism department was struggling with too many students and not enough faculty, but there are other solutions to that problem.

...The Texas A&M journalism department was struggling with too many students and not enough faculty, but there are other solutions to that problem...

Yeah, like majoring in English instead of "journalism"....

I was a journalism major at A&M when Gates was president and worked at the student paper and I'm now a reporter. While I had pretty good experiences getting interviews with him, I did have issues with his "openness." When Texas deregulated tuition, A&M lost some state funding and the university was about to start chopping up the budget, he promised it would be "open and honest." Then, they wouldn't release the budget when we filed an open records request. Not always so open an honest.