The Sherry Sylvester Show · Texas Public Policy Foundation

Making Good Citizens at Texas A&M with Ben Crockett

·33 min·1 clip

While Texas universities remain ideologically divided, one campus managed to achieve political balance—here's how.

The episode opens with Sherry Sylvester introducing Ben Crockett as a Texas A&M political science major who will graduate in May. She notes that she knows him from his internship at TPPF, where he worked on the Taxpayer Protection Project, and from his podcast work at A&M. Crockett says Sid Tice likely recommended him because of Crockett’s involvement in the Citizenship and Service Initiative. He describes it as a project out of the office of the president built around four pillars meant to prepare students to be competent, confident, and ready citizens of the United States. He puts knowledge first: students need to know what citizenship is and understand history and where they came from. The discussion then shifts to the value of disagreement and exposure to hard conversations. Crockett connects that idea to older campus efforts such as Great Ideas or Great Issues in the Memorial Student Center and says Aggie Agora is meant to bring that spirit back. He explains the name as Greek for marketplace and uses it to describe a place where people who disagree can actually talk, with students and community members able to question speakers directly. Sylvester then turns to Crockett’s title, Chief of Policy in Student Government, and asks what it means. Crockett jokes about title inflation before explaining the scale of representation at A&M. He says student government has about 3,000 students in the organization, represents roughly 80,000 students overall, and sees only about 10 to 15 percent of students vote. That, he argues, makes the role serious rather than ceremonial. He also says he oversees about 30 or 40 people working on different areas. The conversation closes with a return to DEI and to the question of how to move students back toward appreciating America’s privileges, history, progress, and unfinished work. The episode stays focused on campus institutions, civic vocabulary, and the argument that universities should prepare students for public life, not only professional life.

As heard by us

A campus civics conversation that turns disagreement into a student habit.

Ben Crockett's conversation with Sherry Sylvester reads as a campus civics pitch rooted in Texas A&M, student government, and a clear argument for what students should carry with them before graduation.

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Want a Texas A&M campus conversation about citizenship, student leadership, and what makes students ready for public life?

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