UA education at all-time low
Education at the University of Arizona has reached an all-time low. I'm not sure what's going on over in the psychology department, but this campus really needs to reconsider raising tuition prices when it could easily cut back on professors who teach a lot about nothing.
The article on spoon-bending was funny at first, then a little less funny, then as I realized they were serious, just simply sad. It's funny how they couldn't decide themselves whether or not they were able to bend the spoons with their mind, so they decided to box them up and send them to a laboratory to decide for them. What's going on here? Is this guy hoping they get bent during shipping? Seems like these people never put the reefer away after spring break.
It's a shame that as hard as our basketball team recently fought to get national recognition for this university, there are still idiots here who are going to have people in the Northeast wondering if us "desert folk" are drinking water from Mexico.
Ryan Hartman
mechanical engineering junior
UAPD unfairly targets students
I agree with Mr. Jindrick completely. I don't necessarily agree that the UAPD harasses younger or Hispanic people, but they definitely are after students. These are the people that pay the cops' bills and put food on their tables at night.
Not too many people know about this, but it was just a few months ago that a good citizen and great student at the UA received a bomb threat and reported it to the police, fearing students and teachers may be hurt. What did the UAPD do? They arrested the student and held him overnight, later trying to put him on trial. And why? Because he did not give them his name when he reported the threat. Yes, they knew it was a legit threat that the student was thankfully reporting. They paid him back by arresting him and holding him for a night for not giving them his name.
Luckily, the UA was not as stupid, and did not punish the student. But none of it should have happened in the first place. The UAPD is very discriminatory and should be examined and worked on before things get worse.
Joe Lamphear
computer science sophomore
German visitors disruptive
The Wednesday, March 28th edition of the Wildcat had an article concerning the visit of 200 high-school students to the German department. It spoke of how the high-school students enjoyed their visit, interacting with the facilities and faculty of the German department, and "got a view of college life." It seems like they enjoyed the visit very much.
Let me tell you who didn't enjoy the visit: the undergraduate German students whose classes were disrupted by this visit.
I am an undergraduate enrolled in German 102. As a new resident to Arizona, enrolled full-time, I pay $4,902, or $408.50 per credit hour. German 102 is a four-credit course, costing me $1,634 for the semester. And on Wednesday, I got exactly $0 in value out of my class. I arrived at my class to find a massively crowded room, with many seats taken by high school students, and those who arrived after me were forced to sit on the floor. These people forced to sit on the floor were undergraduates enrolled at the UA, who pay tuition and fees, and who - along with many of their parents - pay state taxes that help fund the university. Needless to say, the room was stiflingly hot, massively overcrowded and noisy. This classroom normally feels small to begin with, and on Wednesday, was at the point of claustrophobia. After sitting in class for about 10 minutes, the climate of the class was so bad I was forced to leave. I currently have a 4.0 GPA, and the concept of simply walking out of any class is abhorrent to me, but in this case I simply had no choice. The environment in that classroom was in no way conducive to learning anything that day. This is simply unacceptable.
While having prospective students visit the UA and its departments is a great concept, the execution of this visit was, at best, incompetent. Did anyone from the German department even check to see how many empty seats were available in a given class section? Did anyone bother to see what the maximum number of students in a given classroom was?
Did anyone bother to even consider how disruptive it would be to suddenly double the number of students in a class? While it is unreasonable to expect the German department not to hunt for new students - and new funding - it is hardly unreasonable to expect them to exercise some basic planning skills in their pursuit. The German department needs to strongly reconsider its currently ignored responsibility to the students who are presently enrolled in its classes.
John Sawyer
geosciences junior
