Second in a series on the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.
The following is a direct quote from the letter addressed to me on March 18, 2025, by the State Fire Marshall’s Office (SFMO) regarding the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. “The SFMO also requests that the building remain closed to the public until the violations are resolved or an approved plan of action is in place.”
In Texas higher education, the responsibility to protect human life is not merely administrative; it is moral. Before universities educate students, produce research or serve communities, they assume a sacred trust: to do all in their power to ensure those who enter campus buildings and spaces will be safe and unharmed. Health, safety and welfare are not peripheral concerns to be balanced against budgets, institutional ambition or heartfelt and genuine “community” pressure. Health, safety and welfare are the first obligation of university leadership. For me, a long-standing retired registered architect and former dean and director of two colleges of architecture, human safety is also a professional responsibility.
Safety is of paramount importance for the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum to protect both people and preserve the unique and irreplaceable collections. Maintaining public trust and supporting museum operations relies on a safe environment that serves all.
While safety tasks are delegated by a university president to others, accountability is not. When warnings are ignored, inspections dodged and hazard violations tolerated, the failure is not merely technical; I believe it is ethical.
Texas university campuses are, in effect, small cities with residence halls where students sleep, laboratories handling dangerous materials, performance venues for the public, spaces preserving irreplaceable heritage and labs with vital knowledge, all existing within aging infrastructure strained by decades of use. Deferred Maintenance on Texas campuses reaches far into the billions of dollars, and some of the maintenance backlog impacts the health, safety and welfare of people on campuses. Our Board of Regents has made addressing these issues a priority, but the list is long and expensive. Occupants—students, visitors, children and the elderly—especially in public buildings such as the PPHM are mostly unfamiliar with safety protocols and evacuation routes. In emergencies, they depend entirely on architectural designs they do not understand, nor should they have to.
If a university president knows a building is unsafe, what does leadership require? Is the question regarding responsibility for safety not also one of morality? Does a disaster having never occurred remove the responsibility and morality?
Catastrophic fires, collapses, floods and crowd disasters almost never occur without warning. History provides brutal examples of inspection reports identifying deficiencies, engineers flagging risks and safety officers raising alarms. The record of numerous investigations following tragedy, including loss of life, reveals inaction, delay and/or apathetic deferral. Warning of an impending potential disaster was foreseeable. Public buildings (museums, schools, theaters, stadiums, hotels, government buildings, etc.) where crowds of children and elderly visitors present a higher risk of danger because of panic and confusion during emergencies in facilities where fire and evacuation exits are not where they are supposed to be, like in the current PPHM facilities.
The Texas SFMO exists to protect people and property through enforcement of fire codes, inspections, investigations, licensing of fire-protection systems and education. Its authority is not window dressing. SFMO is the institutional embodiment of lessons learned from “accidental” deaths, making fire codes a moral reality. Compliance keeps people alive.
Compliance with fire codes should not be to avoid fines. Compliance is a righteous obligation from which ignorance or “wink-and-a-nod leadership” is not excused.
Leadership that treats safety warnings as inconveniences rather than imperatives has already failed its ethical test. This is where moral responsibility intersects with policy. In Texas higher education, authority flows through the layers of governing boards, to presidents, to senior administrators, to facilities management, to environmental health and safety offices and to local fire officials.
When safety failures are allowed to persist, it is rarely because no one knew about them. It is because responsibility was diffused—everyone assumed someone else would act, and the unthinkable would never happen. The moral stakes are heightened because universities invite public trust. The public has every right to expect that the PPHM, lecture halls, residence halls, auditoriums and all campus places are safe.
In the event of tragedy, legal liability primarily falls on institutions rather than presidents. But the moral responsibility of presidents is unavoidable. Presidents who ignore or postpone action on known safety risks cannot escape moral accountability, especially when lives are at stake.
Repairs are expensive. Compliance is inconvenient. Budgets are finite. But leadership is defined precisely by what is protected when tradeoffs are unavoidable. In Texas, public universities are stewards of both taxpayer funds and human lives, and I believe safety must come first.
Fire safety, structural integrity and emergency preparedness are not simply code issues; they are governance issues, they are ethical issues and they are presidential issues on university campuses.
When presidents treat health, safety and welfare as non-negotiable moral obligations, rather than regulatory hurdles, they honor both the law and the lives entrusted to their care. This is the intersection of public responsibility and personal morality, and every university president stands at this busy intersection. West Texas A&M University prides itself on preparing engaged citizens to be future leaders, a mission that must begin with models of leadership worthy of trust.
Walter V. Wendler is the President of West Texas A&M University. His weekly columns, with hyperlinks, are available at https://walterwendler.com/.
