Collecting funds for forests a simple and fair solution

Protesting reasonable user fees for Coronado National Forest is like protesting Albertson's or Safeway because they have the audacity to (gasp) ask you to pay for the food you take from their respective establishments.

Lands held in the public trust cost money to maintain. The money has to come from somewhere. Asking the people who use the land to support the cost of maintaining the land is both the simplest and fairest solution. One must remember that for "Congress to increase allocation for these resources in their annual budget appropriation," this necessitates either an increase in the federal budget or a cut in another portion thereof. In either case, we are talking about tax revenue from every taxpayer in the United States, the vast majority of whom will never set foot in Arizona, much less Coronado National Forest. Why should taxpayers in New Hampshire, Georgia or Alaska be forced to subsidize our weekend recreation?

If, as Jessica Lee asserts (Tuesday, "Mt. Lemmon belongs off corporate market."), only a fraction of the collected user fees are going back into the lands on which they are collected, this is a separate issue that should certainly be addressed. The Forest Service and their agents (whether public or private) should absolutely be held accountable for their management of the revenue they collect. Mismanagement of "earmarked" money is far too common a practice at all levels of government; all the more reason for revenue to be collected and utilized on as small and local a scale as possible.

Brian Hawkins
neuroscience graduate student

Israeli withdrawal from West Bank would not bring peace

Carrie Brown figured it out (Tuesday, "Ending Israel's occupation is a moral obligation.")! She figured out a way to get lasting peace in the Holy Land. Somebody call USA Today, The New York Times and The Associated Press. Heck, if you have time, somebody get al-Jazeera on a satellite phone.

In her guest column, Brown inaccurately suggested that the Israelis withdraw from all of the occupied territories defensively conquered by Israel (the West Bank and Gaza) after June 1967. As the current conventional wisdom goes, if Israel returns from its "illegal occupation" of the disputed territories, it will "promote a just peace for both Israelis and Palestinians."

Fortunately for us, we already know what happens if the occupied territories were not under Israeli autonomy. Revisiting the years before 1967, specifically starting from 1947, when Israel remained in its UN-mandated borders, was there lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Hardly. In fact, three wars were fought to destroy the Jewish homeland and to drive the Jews into the sea. Outmatched and dangerously outnumbered, the Jews fought hard for their religious freedom. Each time, the Jews have been able to fight off their Arab invaders ÷ before American military assistance, mind you.

The argument that "illegal occupation" is the reason for the bloodshed is a racially-charged misconception that spreads like wildfire. Even after the Arabs rejected the United Nation's decision (resolution 181) to divide the land between the Israelis and Palestinians and let them both share Jerusalem as their capital, the Arabs felt they could take the entire country over and drive the Jews out of their biblical homeland. No sharing, no peace, and definitely no acceptance of Israel's right to exist.

No amount of movement by the Israeli military would fully please Arabs until Jews are wiped out of the region completely.

Jacob Levy
pre-business freshman

A clarification of stance on tuition hike for grad students

After reading Monday's Wildcat article about graduate tuition ("Grads would see largest tuition hike under Likins' plan"), I felt compelled to clarify the stance I took in representing the Graduate and Professional Student Council's position on the tuition question. The article at best simplified and at worst misquoted my statements regarding tuition.

My statement to the Wildcat was that "GPSC would only be willing to consider" supporting a tuition increase, but was quoted as saying, "GPSC will" support it. This raises a very important question ÷ was I guaranteeing the support of the peak graduate and professional student representative body for any and all tuition increases? The simple answer is "no." The tuition issue is particularly sensitive and complex and we are definitely at the beginning of a process. There are still three proposed models on the table ÷ no commitments have been made by the Arizona Board of Regents or the administration to any tuition increase or to a specific means of dealing with the financial impact of such an increase.

I need to assure the general campus community that GPSC is intimately aware of the financial damage that tuition increases (of as much as 50 percent) would impose on the graduate and professional student population. I am personally concerned for the non-degree seeking students (who are not able to turn to financial aid or loans for support), for the international students (who cannot apply for loans) and the ability of the university to retain and recruit quality graduate assistants with such significant increases in tuition.

It is also important to communicate that I do not see GTA workload as the only issue that would need to be dealt with by tuition revenues. Research assistants at the UA currently pay full tuition when their colleagues at ASU will only pay 50 percent starting in the fall of 2003. Teaching-assistant relative stipends are at dismally low levels and would drop significantly with excessive tuition increases ÷ in layman's terms, all graduate assistants could choose about 35 peer institutions around the nation and get a better compensation package than at the UA. We also have a long way to go in healthcare with dental care and childcare still untouched.

It is a long road ahead and there is really no tuition package on the table, but I can assure the graduate and professional students of the UA that GPSC is vigorously defending affordable education at this university, coupled with sufficient means to support graduate student quality of life.

Peter Morris
President, Graduate and Professional Student Council
American Indian studies program graduate student