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Editor:
Can UA students become honorable members of society when UA administrators prevaricate and cheat so profusely about the Mount Graham observatory? Let me cite three examples.
Administrator Michael Cusanovich told the Wildcat ("More obstacles on Mount Graham," Sept. 5) that the UA "completed all the required studies, including a full environmental impact study." In fact, the UA had Rep. Kolbe insert a rider specifically deep-sixing the impact study law. A bogus, slapdash study was mailed out weeks after Kolbe's rider, preventing citizens from protesting that flawed study. U.S. law requires consideration of a range of alternatives, for example, alternatives not impacting Apache beliefs or endangered species. A lawful study would have cited: 38 better continental U.S. observatory sites; that Hawaii was clearly superior; that the UA chose the site with the worst visibility and most harmful ecology; and that an observatory near Tucson had far superior visibility.
The UA's most outrageous cheating came with its clandestine Dec. 7, 1993, "Pearl Harbor" clear-cut of a virgin forest clearly outside of the area authorized by Congress. Three federal courts ruled the UA illegal.
The UA stole an irreplaceable summit ecosystem and a sacred mountain from the American people by shredding our nation's laws.
The UA's million-dollar 1988 lobbying blitz using taxpayers' money to buy their way around our nation's laws was contemptible. But Cusanovich's outright lie of suggesting that the UA followed the law, when in fact there was never anything but a worthless, exempt-from-law impact statement, is deeply troubling. What kind of twisted ethical values guide our university administrators and threaten to contaminate our student body?
Sabine Wilms
UA graduate student
Chinese studies
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