Editor:
After budget cuts, department cuts, competency cuts and a whole lot of sniveling, I have something to say to all the wandering souls in UA-land: Get out while you still can! As a prospective graduate student in the soon-to-be-extinct Exercise and Sports Science Department, I was at first not pleased with the concept of mortgaging my future to move across country to attain the degree I desire. Then it hit me. I would have felt worse had I already been locked on course to receive one of the last degrees from a soon to be defunct program Ä what a resum‚ builder that would have been.
If one takes all the recent activities of the university into account, it seems apparent that the UA is in a transitional phase, attempting to redefine itself and rebuild curriculum Ä from the ground up if necessary. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to be anyone's "transitional student." If you agree with Jon Leonard's letter to the editor (Nov. 3) when he says that money talks, administrators listen, then you might consider speaking with your tuition dollars (instead of trying to bankrupt the Student Union which would have minimum impact on any decisions made regarding curriculum). Even if it means taking your money out of state, you owe it to yourself to investigate other possibilities in case your department gets the next swing of the executioner's ax.
Who knows, maybe all these changes will result in the University of Arizona becoming one of the premier institutions in the country, but until the plans of President Manuel T. Pacheco, Sypherd, et. all are fully known, are you willing to wager your career on it?
Tim Kolacny
Alumnus 1992