Deadline set for negotiations on proposed GPSC/ASUA split

The University of Arizona administration recently imposed a Feb. 8 deadline on any further negotiations regarding the Graduate Professional Student Council's proposed split with ASUA. It will convene a new ASUA/GPSC negotiating committee in the meantime.

"We asked them to get together and bring back a proposal that accommodates both groups," said Michael Cusanovich, vice president for research and graduate studies. "If they are incapable of doing that, we will resolve it for them. With that sort of incent ive, we expect them to solve it."

"The administration has asked us to come up with four-person negotiating teams," said Associated Students President Benjamin Driggs. "This requirement from the administration gives the impetus for some concrete discussion to begin."

GPSC is entering the new discussions with two contingency plans, council president Melanie Ayers said. One calls for a complete split with the Associated Students and the other, based upon a recent UA student government study, calls for extensive funding reorganization as opposed to structural changes.

"I have an open mind so I'm not married to any initial proposals," Driggs said. "I want a solution so that each year the same problem does not happen again."

Graduate council member Mitzi Forbes was not optimistic about negotiations.

"My sense of the council members as a whole is that they prefer a split," she said. "On some issues there will be room for compromise. A lot of it will depend on the creativity, ideas and personalities of people on the team."

No definite schedule has been set for the negotiation meetings, but they will most likely occur Friday afternoons over the upcoming weeks.

Basketball ticket sales revised

After mixed results last semester, ASUA and the UA Athletic Department will institute revised, non-lottery men's basketball ticket sales.

Starting Jan. 22, 508 student basketball tickets will be available at McKale Ticket Office for that week's games, ASUA president Ben Driggs said. Tickets will be available on the same basis every Monday throughout the season.

Due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, tickets for the University of California Los Angeles and University of Southern California games will be available Tuesday.

The McKale Ticket Office is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.