President Peter Likins defended his tuition and mandatory fees proposal this week, saying his plan would generate funding for course availability, but student leaders are worried students won't reap the benefits of his proposed tuition increase.

Likins said while the student tuition proposal will generate money for course availability, his potential budget could provide substantially more than that figure, although he would not disclose the amount. [Read article]

Local baseball players rushed through the children's wing of the University Medical Center, providing ailing kids with autographs and memorabilia.

Infielder Matt Kata and pitcher Mike Gosling, of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, visited about 15 children in the general pediatric wing and the bone marrow transplant unit during their one-hour stay, talking to each child for about five minutes before moving on. [Read article]

More than 200 American Indian artists and an estimated 6,000 art lovers will descend on the Arizona State Museum this weekend for the 11th annual Southwest Indian Art Fair.

American Indian artists from throughout the Southwest will be selling their crafts, which include jewelry, pottery and paintings.

For the first time, UA students will receive free admission when they present their CatCard at the fair, which will run Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the lawn in front of the museum. [Read article]

Students will get an opportunity to test their strength and accuracy in the annual drilling competition today, which takes place on the huge rock outside of Old Main.

The competition, sponsored by the department of mining and geological engineering, will take place at noon outside of Old Main, said Matt Crawford, a geological engineering senior and student mine manager at the UA San Xavier Mining Laboratory. [Read article]

A UA junior and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity member was arrested and charged with kidnapping a woman at 12:40 a.m. Saturday at the fraternity house, 1509 E. Second St., University of Arizona Police Department reports stated.

Two women flagged a UAPD car down, who responded to the fraternity house for a noise complaint. One woman was crying and holding her arm, reports stated.

The woman who was crying told police the student forced her into his bathroom and closed the bedroom and bathroom doors behind him, reports stated. [Read article]

A UA student has taken tsunami relief fundraising into his own hands, and tomorrow hopes to raise $5,000 for victims through a paintball competition he has helped organize.

Chuong Tran, an electrical engineering sophomore and avid paintballer, said he and his father Thai Tran have organized a paintball tournament all day tomorrow to raise money for victims of the tsunami that devastated southeast Asia two months ago. [Read article]

This Sunday at the Park Student Union, expect to be treated like a star.

From 6 p.m. until the conclusion of the 77th annual Academy Awards broadcast, the films committee and special events committee of the University Activities Board will be hosting an Oscar party complete with fun, food and prizes.

Allen Menasco, a media arts freshman and vice chair of the film committee, said to expect a lot of fun. [Read article]

"The data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking ... that white men are substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming."
- Harvard University President Larry Summers in a transcript released last week, comparing these groups with women, who he noted are underrepresented in the academic fields of science and math. Summers has drawn fire for suggesting that innate differences - as well as social factors - may account for the gender gap [Read article]