As an alumnus, I am very happy to see the detail in The University of Texas at Austin “Eyes of Texas” report. I need to sit with it, read it carefully, and think about it before commenting further.

Agree or disagree, I do appreciate the obvious time and effort that went into it.

The site is handy, but feel free to skip to the full book-length report.

One immediate thing I read was that the committee could find no proof that the phrase was based on Robert Lee’s “The Eyes of the South are upon you”, as I had heard. It was in the memoir of a former engineering dean, but that work had other factual errors. In researching with Washington and Lee University (where it was said to have been said by Lee), they couldn’t find any instance of Lee ever saying that. I’m updating my previous post about this to note this detail.