KRISTEN ELVES/Arizona Daily Wildcat Provost George Davis and President Pete Likins take questions Friday at a town hall meeting. The audience asked questions that ranged from campus security, to budget cuts, to students who behave rudely in class.

Far-ranging talk on curriculum, budget plan turns to tribute to professors Îkilled in the line of duty'

Members of the UA community packed the auditorium in the Modern Languages building Friday for a talk originally planned on the Focused Excellence proposal, that gravitated toward discussion of the three professors shot and killed by a student last Monday in the College of Nursing.

"Each of us will remember exactly where we were when we heard the news on Oct. 28," Provost George Davis said.

The meeting started with a moment of silence in memory of the victims. More than 300 people stood, silently, with heads bowed. No cell phone rang; no rustle of movement could be heard. A handful of people in the audience dabbed their eyes with their fingertips in that moment and during later discussions.

"Monday morning, three of our colleagues were shot to death by a student in our College of Nursing, and then everything else just seemed inconsequential: budget cuts, meetings · " President Pete Likins said.

Michael Dues, head of the department of communication, spoke about how the three professors killed Monday by then-student Robert Stewart Flores Jr. were doing their jobs as professors.

"Those professors were afraid of that student. They were threatened by that student and they made a courageous decision to hold strong and say, ÎYou failed,'" Dues said. "They were killed in the line of duty and we ought not to be sad for their loss. We ought to be proud of it."

The audience applauded.

He said part of an instructor's job is to decide who is qualified and who is not, acting as a gatekeeper. In this case, the question was whether Flores was qualified to care for others as a nurse. He was not, Dues said.

Tucsonan Linda Marie Small called for the UA to do more to increase security at the College of Nursing, which reopens today.

"In this incident in the past week, there were forewarnings that this student had problems," Small said. "I think I'd like you to tell me that you're going to have guards in that building when it opens."

Likins said posting guards would be going too far.

"It's hard to imagine being more secure, and we cannot put guards at the gates of our public institutions," Likins said. "The challenge has to do with the issue of identifying stress levels of human beings. The challenge is identifying people who have signs of stress that may be dangerous to themselves or other members of our campus."

Members of the UA community should be conditioned to call for help a little sooner when they find a student who's stressing over a paper, or struggling otherwise, Likins said.

Beyond the public memorial ceremony for the nurses scheduled for today, the UA may need more meetings to deal with last Monday's events, Likins said.

Even as Likins and Davis spoke about unrelated issues, the administrators and members of the audience revisited the shootings in their responses.

"Our heads and souls and minds are just spiraling because so much is happening," Davis said. Lated he added, "In your classes you should try and engage your students in their feelings about the murders of last Monday."

Another person spoke in reference to student behavior, not related to violence, but as it applies to the UA's goal of becoming more student-centered.

"To me and to some faculty, at least, there is the perception that the Îstudent-centered' community is turning the tables the wrong direction," said Greg DiCenzo, a support systems analyst in the department of veterinary sciences and microbiology.

DiCenzo described UA students as "spoiled kids" who walk around in beach attire and "attend class when they feel like it."

DiCenzo referred to a Wildcat story printed Friday that stated, according to a survey on disruptive student behavior in the classroom, coming to class late, leaving early and talking in class were the most disruptive problems in the classroom. Sixty faculty members responded to the survey, released last week by the Dean of Students Office.

Instead of the UA becoming more student-centered, perhaps the students should become more UA-centered or civic-minded, DiCenzo said.

He said citing students for cheating on tests was becoming more and more difficult for faculty, given the amount of evidence needed.

Likins vigorously disagreed with DiCenzo's description of UA students, adding that the students of today are more civic-minded than those of past decades.

Political science graduate student Nick Ray and two undergraduates asked Likins what he would do to ensure that the programs they want to study would still be here next fall and that undergraduates can graduate in four years.

While under-enrolled classes will be cut and some departments will be merged or cut, administrators will do what they can to ensure students who have started a program can finish it, Davis said.

Molecular and cellular biology freshman Brooke LaFlamme, who also majors in English, asked Likins how she could be assured that she would graduate in four years, since the only way she can afford to attend college is via a four-year scholarship.

Likins said if LaFlamme is on the "Finish in Four" program, she will graduate within four years, but added the budget problems have hurt the quality of education students may receive.

Davis blamed the Arizona Board of Regents for voting 6-5 in May against a large tuition hike that would have raised an additional $4.5 million this year. Regents opted instead for a slight increase to keep up with the pace of inflation.

Some asked whether the humanities programs and the department of journalism, specifically, would be targeted for cuts.

The thought of cutting the humanities program would be absurd, Likins said. And for the rest of his presidency, the department of journalism is safe from cuts ÷ as attempts to cut the department would translate into his hearing about it from local media in "barrels and barrels of ink," he said.