Defer funding for IIF

By Editor
Arizona Summer Wildcat
August 27, 1997

Call it a case of misdirected money.

Call it an underground cavern for freshmen.

Call it what you will, the Integrated Instructional Facility has been and remains a project whose time has not yet come.

With last week's approval by the Arizona Board of Regents, the IIF threatens to worsen the situation at a campus that already has over $91 million worth of buildings in disrepair - and that according to 1995 figures.

Designed to serve as a center for first-year students, the $20 million IIF proposal looks great on paper. Among other traits, it includes:

• Six new lecture halls and 18 smaller classrooms
• A central first-year student advising center
• 'Information Commons' that include top-of-the-line computer labs linked to the Internet

Campus-wide, unfunded capital improvement projects range from deteriorating floors and worn-out restrooms to buildings that do not meet current codes.

While there is no legal requirement to apply building code retroactively, UA buildings average 30 years of age, and many clearly need help.

The Modern Languages building, where rickety desks and below-par teaching equipment still litter many classrooms, recently received what administrators affectionately called a "multimedia upgrade." This consisted of chaining TV/VCR carts to classroom walls. Quite an upgrade indeed!

In the Old Chemistry building as well, students still crowd into class perched on rickety, wooden chairs, some of which even lack a surface for writing.

In light of these instances and others, we feel the $20 million would be better spent on removing the existing barriers to education, not to mention bringing older buildings up to code as the next century approaches.

Even adding the $20 million in IIF funds to the ongoing $10 million classroom renovation project would be a viable alternative, as the Arizona Legislature allocated just $19.2 million in 1996 to fix buildings for all four state campuses.

The timeless aphorism "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes into play.

What the Regents, school administrators and student leaders seem have forgotten is that things fall apart.

While proponents of the IIF project have cited campus-wide classroom shortages in its favor, enrollment has declined for the second straight year. It is imprudent to pour millions of dollars into a new building for fewer students.

We applaud Associated Students President Gilbert Davidson and other ASUA student representatives for their support of funding much-needed improvements to the Memorial Student Union, however their new-found support for the IIF project appears to be a cruel, tit-for-tat compromise with university administrators that borders on duplicitous.

Never before were the two projects linked, but when Davidson, Administrative Vice President Tara Taylor and Executive Vice President Casey Cuny won office last spring, they began to support the IIF, despite polls indicating opposition by a majority of students.

In an April letter to the Regents, the three wrote their change of heart was to "make sure that they [Regents] did not stop the Student Union project because of concerns about the IIF."

That notion is mistaken.

However, because the UA has already poured some $600,000 into IIF coffers, we do not ask that the project be scrapped entirely - rather it should be deferred to a time when enrollment is increasing and the rest of the campus is up-to-par and ready for such a project.

We believe in planning for the future, but the Regents, university administrators and student leaders have forgotten that any future, ironically like a solid building, needs a firm base on which to stand.

Campus deterioration threatens that base.

We call on the powers that be to step away from the IIF for now and put that $20 million where the campus really needs it - into existing buildings.

This is the best way to use what are already scarce funds.