Articles


(LAST_SECTION)(NEXT_STORY)






news Sports Opinions arts variety interact Wildcat On-Line QuickNav

The Sacred Old Shoe

By Scott Andrew Schulz
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 1, 1998
Send comments to:
editor@wildcat.arizona.edu


[Picture]

Wildcat File Photo
Arizona Summer Wildcat

Scott Andrew Schulz


A line.

Defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as being "the locus of a point having one degree of freedom."

If you happened to try these past few days getting a CatCard, adding money to your meal account, or snagging the last used book in your class section, you know exactly what it means to be part of a university chain gang.

The fact is, you have to run these errands at some point, just like thousands of other students.

You end up feeling trapped. Your mind wandering, you start to check your watch every 15 seconds only to realize that five minutes have gone by and you are still directly across from the vending machine, stock completely memorized.

What might the solution be? This past spring, the president of our university, Peter Likins, was heard time and time again proposing the construction of a new Student Union. The quote by administrators for the facility was sitting at approximately $60 million dollars as of April.

How was this to affect you? Last year, students were faced with a $40 dollar per semester fee, but voted it down by nearly 3-to-1. The message from the students seemed pretty obvious; we did not want to shell out more money to the UA for a building we did not need.

Somehow, Likins and those pushing for this project became blinded by the scorching Tucson sun.

The problem is not the Memorial Student Union, but how it is organized. Constructing a brand new one would not reduce the amount of traffic that floods the building day in and day out. Nor would it necessarily make it faster to complete the registration process as we now know it.

This past Thursday, you may have been one of many who stood in line for a full hour in anattempt to add money to your CatCard meal account. The problem was not the building, but the fact that there were only two windows open to accommodate up to 100 or more people!

Did you find the building to be the root of your frustration or was it more likely the fact that you were confined to an unending line, forcing you to read the back of someone's No Fear shirt for nearly an hour?!

Why it makes sense to put necessary registration stations right next to one another and have only one or two people at these offices in charge of checking through thousandsof students is anybody's guess.

The chances of this issue dying out are about as good as a healthy snowfall next week, and just because we are not going to pay the defeated proposed semester fee does not mean we will not pay in one way or another.

Likins has successfully convinced the Regents that our current Union building has grown old and tired.

But even the state Legislature views a new Union as a luxury that it does not want to fund. Likins has been successful in gaining support for the idea of a new state-of-the-art Student Union, but financial commitment has fallen far short of the $60 million dollar price tag.

Again, why should you care? Likins has admitted in the Wildcat that "what's left will have to come out of student funds," and that looks to be a fairly hefty sum.

On top of that, come next year you will head to registration still wishing you had packed a lunch.

The current Student Union is almost 50 years old and needs some repairs to its infrastructure.

However, these repairs will cost far less than $60 million dollars and, in turn, allow us to hold on to a true UA landmark.

You do not find the nation's oldest universities, such as Harvard and Yale, tearing down their buildings, but instead, you see them making necessary repairs and taking pride in the historical beauty of their campuses.

Old Main is a prime example of this technique.

Try to imagine the UA without it.

President Likins has made it clear that "academic institutions do need to change" and who could disagree?

Real attention needs to go to organizing the system within our Union so that it is as efficient as possible. Let us not make the mistake of wasting precious money that can go to programs and improvements that our community really requires.

That money can go a long way toward helping the UA sustain and improve its reputation for academic excellence.

Scott Andrew Schulz is a sophomore majoring in communication.










Arizona Bookstore: 815 N. Park Ave. - Just off campus - 520-622-4717 Best prices on new & used textbooks