By Anne Carl
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 13, 1997

Likins should act on Mount. Graham

Editor:

We appreciate Rachel Reinhardt and Julie Burkhart's desire for President Likins to halt ill-conceived building projects and come up with a building policy. We, too, question the need to disrupt the Mall and particularly the memorial cactus garden; however, comparing a relatively benign campus project with one that violates all of our country's strongest environmental and cultural protection laws is a stretch.

Were he to say it, we would nod in agreement that the UA's telescope ego trip has also "already left the building." In this case, the train is going the wrong way. Likins needs to bring it back to the building so that it doesn't cause any more damage heading in the wrong direction.

The telescope complex is hardly over 2/3 complete, according to what UA officials say they want. Their proposed project calls for 18 different telescopes, which would effectively level the top of the mountain. Their preferred plan calls for 32 different structures!

Likins won't have forever to alter the harm done on Mt. Graham. If he acts now, he may establish peace. If he waits, he may appease certain twisted old-guard administrators, but he will only be colluding with a project whose ramifications extend way beyond this campus, a project that was disruptive and doomed from the beginning.

Anne Carl
SEAC and Sky Island Watch
Environmental Education '97