Not all financial aid created equal at UA

Your article on student financial aid in yesterday's Wildcat ("Students receive more financial aid") fails to distinguish between student loans and grants. One category requires repayment, and the other doesn't. Since the UA administration consistently fails to break out these figures and couches everything simply as "financial aid," please do their dirty work and explain how aid is allocated between these two very different categories of paying for college. Americans are borrowing at record levels, and college tuition ÷ the inflation rate of which continues to far exceed every other sector of the economy, except maybe health care ÷ is surely contributing to these nationwide woes. UA hiked tuition 40 percent in one year! This is another reason why a line in the sand must be drawn on tuition hikes. If the administration fails to convince the Republican-led state Legislature to increase funding, why doesn't it make cuts in other nonessential services and construction activities? [Read article]

Earlier this month, a 21-year-old Tucsonan was found unconscious behind a popular bar on Fourth Avenue, and investigators are still trying to piece the situation together.

The episode made the news because Fourth Avenue is the centerpiece of college nightlife in town ÷ and someone found unconscious in an alley behind a bar is certainly news.

But more than likely, the possible attack was deemed important because the young man, Mark Fontes, was found behind a gay bar and was openly gay himself. [Read article]

The last few years here at the University of Arizona have seen many significant changes in the atmosphere and condition of the campus, the students and the establishments on campus that provide the goods and services that the students require on a daily basis.

Of course the university needs to evolve in order to keep up with the changing needs of a large university and its population. However, the last few years have seen a disturbing, growing trend here at the UA. Today, the goal of everything campus-related seems to be to pry as much money as possible from the wallets of the students and their parents. Whether it be through the bookstore's overpricing of textbooks and minimal buyback rates or the price gouging incurred daily at the U-Mart, students are constantly hit up for cash when they really have no alternative but to spend the money to make departments and campus stores more profitable. Money, rather than service to the students, is the driving force of the campus. [Read article]

Legislature shouldn't put financial burden on few

The bill proposed by state Rep. Debbie McCune that would "grandfather" current students to a set tuition and make across-the-board hikes illegal would destroy Arizona universities.

If this bill is passed, it will be yet another example of the state Legislature's attempts to drive all three state universities into the ground. By doing this, they would be ripping away the powers of the Arizona Board of Regents to decide what tuition is best for the university system as a whole. The board would become powerless to reconcile university budgets if the Legislature decides yet again to cut funding from universities that are already bleeding. [Read article]