City Council hopefuls motivated by professor
After 55 years at St. Mary’s University, legendary professor Charles Cotrell plans to step down at the end of this semester.
His long tenure at St. Mary’s includes 13 years as university president, thousands of classroom hours as a political science professor and countless acts of mentorship for his students.
Even as Cotrell prepares to step away from his university duties, however, the evidence of his massive impact can be seen in this year’s City Council elections.
Three former Cotrell students, all of whom graduated from St. Mary’s within the past three years, are running for council seats. Any one of them would be among the youngest City Council members ever elected in San Antonio. If they all made it together, it would represent a profound, unprecedented generational shift for our city government.
On Thursday morning, Cotrell welcomed back these three protégés — Gabrien Gregory, Mark Vargas and Geremy Landín — to speak, via Zoom, to his Urban Politics class.
Gregory, 24, is one of four candidates challenging North East incumbent Clayton Perry in District 10. He serves as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and worked as an organizer last year for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in Iowa and Texas.
Gregory took four classes at St. Mary’s with Cotrell.
“This is a guy who is a legend locally,” Gregory said. “He has, in one way or another, had his hand on so many issues and been involved with so many candidates and initiatives over the years.
“That’s what drew me to taking classes with him. Dr. Cotrell offers students an ability to learn from decades worth of Texas political history.”
Over the years, Cotrell’s classes were laboratories for political activism. As a young professor in the 1960s, he had José Angel Gutiérrez, Willie Velásquez and Ignacio “Nacho” Pérez in his classes at the same time.
Gutiérrez went on to form the Raza Unida Party, Velásquez became the driving force of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Pérez co-founded the Mexican American Youth Organization.
Vargas, 24, is one of 12 candidates on the South Side vying this year for the open seat in District 3. He grew up in San Antonio, spent his freshman year of college at Seattle University, then transferred to St. Mary’s.
Vargas, who took five classes with Cotrell, remembers the first time he crossed paths with the professor. He saw Cotrell walking in the university’s main building, recognized him and decided to introduce himself.
“What was just a simple hello turned into a 30-minute conversation about San Antonio and about what brought me back to transfer to St. Mary’s,” Vargas said.
Gregory speaks with admiration about what he calls the Dr. Cotrell Socratic Method of teaching.
“You get in the room and you set up these tables in a circle and almost every single class is set up in a way that allows students to offer their perspective and discuss what we’re learning about,” Gregory said. “Dr. Cotrell has always given every student that ability to feel comfortable and speak about issues in a way that they resonate.”
Gregory said his council campaign has been inspired by Cotrell’s classroom encouragement of respectful debate.
“It’s one of the only classes at St. Mary’s that I took,” Gregory said, “where you’re listening to people who you may disagree with, but it actually did contribute to changing perspectives and saying, ‘Maybe that is a good point that I wasn’t taking into consideration.’ ”
Landín, 25, is one of 11 West Side candidates competing for the open District 5 seat. Unlike Gregory and Vargas, he didn’t get a political science degree (majoring instead in exercise and sports science) and took only one class with Cotrell.
That class, however, Civic Engagement & Social Action, had a big impact on Landín. “You never know when your words in print or spoken words have an effect,” Cotrell said. “Geremy said that course really affected him. It’s all about the question of service leading to civic engagement, which deals with resolving problems in the classical way but also becoming involved in the public square, the civic world.”
Cotrell said Landín’s early work as a freelance photographer offered a clue to his political potential. Cotrell frequently saw Landín out at public events and was struck by how much he enjoyed interacting with people.
“A lot of photographers are flies on the wall, but I always loved talking to people,” Landín said.
On Thursday, all three candidates talked about the political challenges and rewards involved in being a young, firsttime candidate. After the class, Vargas reflected on Cotrell’s legacy.
“Whenever I gave tours to prospective students,” Vargas said, “I told them, ‘Take a class with Dr. Cotrell. He’s going to tap into your energy and the excitement of why you should be proud to be an active citizen.’ ”
He’s done it for more than half a century.