Road Trip

The Arizona Board of Regents is under the impression that the students of the University of Arizona want the IIF Building. They're wrong.

If students wish to voice their opposition to this bad building plan, tomorrow's board of regents' meeting being held at ASU East is your last chance.

Tomorrow, the Arizona Board of Regents will finally decide whether the UA will be allowed to construct the controversial Integrated Instructional Facility, or IIF Building, to be built beneath the UA Mall as a "homebase" for future freshmen and transfer students. Listed as 'Agenda Item 5. Integrated Instructional Facility Approval,' this idea is now close to becoming reality. Unless the university community, en masse, lets the regents know how it feels about this before the meeting or, even better, makes the trip to ASU East, the wishes of the students here will be easily ignored.

A regents' report from January looked at whether the universities should either renovate existing buildings on campus or build new ones. For the UA administration, the answer appeared to be obvious: forget renovation and let's just build. Forget about revamping a Student Union that's falling apart - let's instead build an expensive cave for use only by a relatively small group of students.

At the last ABOR meeting, Regent President John Munger, Regents Hank Amos and Judy Gignac showed the greatest support for the building.

Let us take a reality break now and look at the situation.

As president, Regent Munger only votes in the event of a tie. It really does not matter that he supports the IIF Building because there will not be a tie tomorrow, because Regent Amos will be out of town, as confirmed by the office of the Arizona Board of Regents. Guess Amos won't be voting on anything tomorrow, nor will Munger.

The surprise is Regent Gignac. Usually, she stands up firmly for students' interests and will most likely vote against a tuition increase.

The oddity is her full support of the IIF Building. For some strange reason she believes that IIF will be good for students. Judy, we love you and all, but you're off the mark on this one. We hope you see the light soon and vote against the IIF Building tomorrow. Maybe you could just pass that money along for the renovation of the Student Union instead? That would do a lot more for students and for the rest of the university community.

Besides ASUA President-elect Gilbert Davidson, the IIF Building has no real student support on campus. The regents need to know this, and there need to be as many students as possible to tell them that. A huge showing of UA students could sway enough of the board's votes to kill the IIF Building. Let the board know what you want before it is too late.

To call with comments, the phone number for the head office of the Arizona Board of Regents is (602) 229-2500. Or, to find out how to get to tomorrow's board of regents' meeting at ASU East, call the Arizona Students' Association at 621-2782.

By Editoral Staff
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 23, 1997