The UA is beset by problems: an unwieldy state Legislature, financial woes, class shortages, underpaid faculty and a retention rate that makes New York inner-city high schools look prestigious. Undergraduate and graduate students remain disunited. ASUA is filled with self-congratulating narcissists. The student body is still too homogenous.

There isn't a single decision that has the potential to change all that - except, of course, the choice for the next UA president. [Read article]

It is forbidden to speak negatively of the sick and deceased in many religions and cultures, including Jewish and Muslim traditions, which both discourage speaking ill of the departed. Idealists might hold that our innate human decency drives us to eulogize the dead and glorify the suffering, but when respectful words become myth, it is time to put flattery to rest.

After Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a severe stroke Jan. 4 that left him comatose, Israel was forced to consider its future. The startle came just weeks before the Israeli parliamentary elections, in which Sharon's Kadima Party was expected to be victorious. [Read article]

For everything else, there's MasterCard

UA seniors are no strangers to jumping through hoops. They've taken their trads and Tier Twos, they've learned the secrets of getting what they need on WebReg, in departmental pre-registrations and have even adjusted to navigating through an extra page before they get to WebMail. However, with one semester left, there's a unique set of obstacles that faces hopeful graduates, which is rough on the wallet. Second-semester seniors will need to shell out 20 bucks for a cap and gown and $35 for a degree check - and that's to say nothing of the hours they will spend waiting in line at the UofA Bookstore and trudging between pre-graduation meetings with advisers. Yikes. For their consumption of cash and time, these pricey chores before graduation get a Fail. [Read article]

Need isn't determined by race

Regarding yesterday's letter (from Jared Hautamaki) "Targeted scholarships not discriminatory:" Please check your dictionary, Hautamaki: Preferring one person to another according to a category (minority) rather than individual merit is the very definition of "discrimination." Under the match-the-state-population scheme, a Hispanic kid from Scottsdale is considered more needy than a black kid from Mammoth. A white kid from Sunnyside High School is somehow in better shape than a Hispanic kid from Catalina Foothills High School. On a national scale, a Hispanic kid from La Jolla, Calif., is considered to be at a greater disadvantage than a black kid from the coalfields of Appalachia. It's absurd. Believe it or not, poverty and "need" aren't constrained by race. Why not target a few poor Appalachian white kids - they'd add just as much diversity as an equal number of Mesa-born Hispanic kids. [Read article]