Illustration by Arnie Bermudez

With administrators struggling under the burden of half a decade of budget woes, the economy slumping and the state Legislature cutting, the UA is forced to find creative ways to save money - much to the chagrin of many programs and departments that have come under the axe. We asked our columnists, "If you were calling the shots, what would you shoot first?"

Justin St. Germain Sports Editor

Athletics should donate extra funds to UA

The first thing most people bring up when it comes to budget cuts is how much members of the athletics department make. We've all heard it: "John Mackovic gets paid $900,000 to quit coaching football, when the UA could use that money to keep its best professors."

Don't believe it. It's completely false. The money that paid John Mackovic came from the same place as the money that now pays Mike Stoops, Lute Olson and all the other coaches and administrators: the athletics department itself. Contrary to popular belief, the athletics department is completely financially independent of the university. So Mackovic's money didn't come from your tuition, and it wouldn't have gone toward teacher pay, anyway.

In fact, the athletics department could help alleviate the UA's budget crunch. As athletic director Jim Livengood mentioned earlier this week at the faculty senate meeting, Arizona Athletics is one of a handful of NCAA departments that operates both without state funding and without a deficit.

If football ticket sales continue to increase as they have since Stoops' hiring, the added money should push the athletics department further into the black. If that happens, who's to say Livengood won't take some of that extra money and donate it to university projects?

Justin St. Germain is counting down the days to Spring Training and is a creative writing senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Daniel Scarpinato Columnist

Where should UA trim fat?

Well, budget-cutters could start by rolling back the morale-destroying administrator salary increases approved last semester.

Or maybe they could trim back in the area of ambitious race-based projects set up to create a quota-filled campus.

Of course, most students might argue that construction is out of control, and they're right. It is.

But administrators claim we don't understand the "color of money." They say our tuition money doesn't go to construction, and furthermore, that construction money cannot be used for anything but buildings.

Actually, 15 percent of your tuition check does go to pay for building construction, as Wildcat news editor Keren Raz discovered last spring in her analysis, "Tuition pays off debts."

The fact is that there is way too much arrogance at the UA with administrators and even many professors holding the notion that the citizens of Arizona should be more willing to fork over their money in the form of taxes to pay for the university's constant demands.

Despite all the whining two years ago when the state asked the UA, along with all state agencies, to cut back, life still went on. Administrators found a way, making sure to articulate along the way just how painful it all was.

But just because the state is being more generous this year and things look more favorable doesn't mean the UA should stop watching its budget and finding ways to scale back.

After all, the administrators at this institution are public servants and should be thankful the taxpayers of this state are as generous as they are.

Daniel Scarpinato is a former editor in chief of the Daily Wildcat and current editor of The Desert Yearbook. He is a journalism and political science senior and can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Sabrina Noble Columnist

We wouldn't have used it anyway

I see now why the giddy alumni who must operate the budget office are having a rough time: At first glance, there seems to be very little the UA could trim. With the Department of Wise Monetary Appropriations already cut, we're limited to academics. Family and consumer sciences, a reflex choice, indirectly brings in staggering revenue by housing athletes. The College of Planning, another natural choice upon surveying Tucson's profound lack of planning, has insisted that it will, in fact, start applying degrees toward land use, growth control and drainage sometime very soon if things go according to, well, plan.

Amazingly, Focused Excellence itself - already responsible for so many cutbacks - may once again provide guidance. As we raise admissions standards and start cutting out minorities from Arizona's famously under-funded, minority-populated public schools, a number of programs will no longer fit our increasingly elitist vision. Among these: the Language, Reading and Culture program, Teaching & Teacher Education and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. After all, ESL teaching really doesn't fit into Focused Excellence. Other dead weight: the Critical Languages Program, which cannot grant degrees but does teach rare languages like Swahili, Irish-Gaelic and Ukrainian. Focused Excellence hardly has a place for such worldly things, and students should go to the Arizona State Museum, the libraries and the various art museums if they want to teach themselves something about diversity. Surely, all these will be more heavily funded as they trick Arizonans into believing something intelligent is going on here, even as they are forced to watch from outside the gates.

Sabrina Noble believes wisdom can exist even in budget crises. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Jason Poreda Opinions Assistant

And the winner is...

Which department I would take the proverbial axe to is a question that could really be boiled down to which department I am willing to piss off this week. With this in mind, I would like to "take one for the team" by suggesting that my departments should be cut. Of course, then I might not be able to attend class for the rest of the year, as my professors and fellow students make my last semester here one to forget.

That being said, and since the Arizona International College is already on the way out, there has always been one department that I thought the UA could do without: the women's studies department.

I realize the importance of studying women's issues and educating people on these issues. I was even one of the brave male souls who took a class offered by the department. Admittedly, it was to fill a gen-ed requirement, and it was the only class that would fulfill it over the summer session while I was here in Tucson.

Even after my interesting and educational experience, I still say this is a department that could go. Many of the classes offered within this department could be folded into the political science, sociology or history department.

Jason Poreda is a proud political science and communication senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Tim Belshe Columnist

Take out the trash; can public art

The first thing to go should be public art. The university's current policy requires that the majority of new construction projects allocate 0.5 percent of the construction cost to public art. This means that if you're putting in a $50 million building, you'll spend $250,000 on public art.

By the way, the total budget for the new student union was about $60 million. With the money that went toward public art for that project, we could have kept a few more instructors around.

Not only could we save by not funding art in the future, we could actually make money right now by auctioning off the university's current collection. If it was worth a quarter of a million dollars a few years ago, it ought to be worth even more now. Think of it as an investment.

Besides, most of the campus community doesn't really like the current public art anyway. I can honestly say that I've never heard someone say anything positive about the naked lady in front of the library, the clothes pins on the east end of the Mall and that ghastly wall thingy that was up by the Student Union Memorial Center last semester. And that broken-down seesaw makes the area in front of Old Main look like a trash dump.

Tim Belshe has no appreciation for art. He is a systems engineering junior and can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Susan Bonicillo Columnist

Scrounging for dummies

In a perfect world, the quest for higher education would be easy. Tuition rates would be reasonable. Society would put more value on learning. Citizens would lay siege upon their state capitals, refusing to leave until legislators devoted every available penny to education.

However, all idealistic musings aside, we need to deal with reality. State funding won't always meet the financial needs of the universities, leaving the schools to come up with the difference. Programs will need to be eliminated.

However, instead of cutting academic programs, the UA needs to focus on non-academic programs and personnel. With the advent of Focused Excellence, students have had to face the elimination, or the threat of elimination, of their programs. This simply isn't fair. Students come into the university believing their academic interests will be protected and prioritized. Though budget cutting is necessary, it should not weaken a student's academic options.

In response, there are a number of options the UA can take. First, some non-academic programs can easily be merged into one. For instance, the Asian Pacific American, Chicano/Hispanic and Native American student affairs can all be consolidated underneath Multicultural/Academic Student Affairs. Additionally, groups like the Commission on the Status of Women and Early Academic Outreach are programs that should be cut and left to be managed and funded by outside sources.

Lastly, the number of administrators needs to be streamlined. Though bureaucracy demands there be a whole lot of people whose sole purpose seems to be wielding a fancy-sounding title, practicality points to their termination. It's no secret that the UA faces a budget crisis. However severe it may be, every possible effort should be made in sparing academic programs from the chopping block.

Susan Bonicillo is still pulling for the College of Planning and Med Tech. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.