Wednesday October 24, 2001

UA President Peter Likins' decision to ask the Arizona Board of Regents to close the Arizona International College has spawned a letter-writing campaign, a petition and a lot of pathetic pouting.

The student and faculty reaction to the proposed closing of the AIC is understandable if unfounded. However, Likins made an intelligent decision, and ABOR should follow suit and amputate the university's most useless appendage.

The decision to close AIC is an intelligent long-term decision to ax a college on campus that is not living up to its goals.

Many have deemed Likins' decision a quick fix - an easy way to grab a couple million dollars when pockets around campus are turning up empty. This position is fallacious. In fact, the university will not save a substantial amount of money this year by closing AIC; most of the resultant $2,259,000 will go to faculty and staff salaries, which will continue to be paid for as long as employee contracts mandate.

AIC isn't shutting its doors at the end of the semester, or at the end of the year. In fact, students currently enrolled in the AIC will be allowed to finish their degrees. So the question remains - what are all these students so upset about?

It seems reasonable for the 20 staff members and12 faculty of the AIC to be upset, considering none of the professors have tenure and most of the staff will be laid off. But the fact remains, it's the students of AIC that are fuming, finger-pointing and referring to President Likins as "unprofessional" and "disrespectful."

According to Likins, the AIC was an experiment.

"I don't think anyone told these students · that they were in a program that was on trial, but in fact, that's what it is," he said. And so, as many experiments do, it failed. This failure is not necessarily a reflection of poor performance by staff or students, but a financial failure.

AIC was supposed to be financially self-supported; however, since its inception in 1997, it never reached that goal. AIC still depends on UA for funding, and over 90 percent of its students were enrolled in 12 or more units of class on the main UA campus last year, which would suggest that most of the students currently protesting the proposed closures were only taking a few classes at AIC to begin with.

It was a noble and worthwhile experiment, and if AIC had proven to be financially plausible, the college would have been a welcome member of our university. As the opposition that many of the AIC students have produced, the college obviously imbued students with a passion that many colleges never try to attain. Students at AIC learn critical thinking and analytical skills - they question and challenge - important qualities in any academic field. And their passion is certainly flaring now.

Angry AIC students are circulating a petition which they hope will show that the community supports AIC completely and - get this - "to convince officials to allocate more funds to AIC and to higher education in general," according to AIC sophomore Jessica Lopez.

First of all, it doesn't matter if the community supports AIC, the fact is the university cannot afford it. And second, it's absurd to expect more money for AIC, considering the fact that last year, the college received more funds per-capita than the entire UA has ever received. AIC should be closed, Likins' decision should be supported and the sniveling should stop.