Last weekend, both political parties held their state conventions in the same weekend, which is a rarity for Texas politics. The Democrats went down to H-Town, while the Republicans headed up the ol’ Chisolm Trail to Ft. Worth.

Usually designed as pep rallies for the party faithful, and an ability to articulate a message, both parties adopted platforms and hope their messages can be carried across the state to victory in November. However, as any member of any organization can tell you, getting 100 percent of your membership to agree with 100 percent of your message is going to fail...100 percent of the time.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum(s); Democrats and Republicans in Texas actually agreed on something. They just didn’t realize it.

Tuition deregulation.

The Democratic Party platform, passed recently, decries Republican “tuition deregulation” because, in their words, it has increased the financial burden and forced many students to take on substantial debt to avoid being priced out of college. The Democrats go on to state that higher education institutions are in the position of either raising tuition or laying off public employees and thus reducing the quality of education.

The Republicans, from a different angle, said they too disagree with tuition deregulation. Their platform states that they support binding audits by the State Comptroller of all public universities and a complete review of the tuition deregulation law for the purpose of validating whether it is accomplishing its stated goal. In other words, they want to see if tuition deregulation is accomplishing its goal.

But here’s where you come in. The legislative session begins Jan. 8, 2013. Since both parties agreed that tuition deregulation may, at best, not be accomplishing its goals, and at worst may be pricing students out of college, will you follow the legislature and see what they do?