The Associated Students of the University of Arizona Senate welcomed provost Andrew Comrie, senior vice president for academic affairs, on Oct. 18 to share his experiences and goals regarding the UA.
Comrie addressed a range of topics, includeding his views on rankings that the UA achieves.
“Halo [effect], if you don’t know, is even long after the facts have changed, people still have a sense of what a place is like,” Comrie said. To further explain, he compared law schools.
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“If I gave you two laws schools to compare — let’s say the UA law school and Princeton law school — which law school do you think would be better?”
More senators raised their hands for Princeton. However, Princeton does not have a law school, which demonstrates the halo effect. That’s why Comrie is focused on something more important.
“Yes, we worry about rankings,” Comrie said. “But in the end, the university is a sufficiently complex place that you have to manage for overall quality.”
Comrie also addressed how to improve the student experience for LGBTQ students in the classroom. Comrie recognized that LGBTQ rights are a hot topic.
“What you see in society and in the media is there are people that don’t get it,” Comrie said.
Comrie also explained why some professors do not understand LGBT issues.
“If you’ve never had to interact with sexuality issues, let alone trans issues, and you have no vocabulary in dealing with that, it’s sort of the unknown,” he said.
However, Comrie did recognize a solution to addressing the issue.
“It’s probably good, hard work,” Comrie said, “putting one foot in front of the other and in context where they’re comfortable.”
ASUA Senator Katie Christopher announced that Campus Pantry Food Day will be Wednesday, Nov. 1.
“Our whole goal with this is to promote donating food from each college,” Christopher said. She encouraged ASUA to reach out to their colleges or contacts to help with the effort.
ASUA Administrative Vice President Lorenzo Johnson announced Campus Pantry has also added 10 new members.
Campus Pantry also had the opportunity to meet with the Board of Trustees last Friday, said ASUA President Matt Lubisich.
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“We talked about the campus pantry food insecurity issue on campus,” Lubisich said. “And we may be seeing a lot of generous donations financially to the Campus Pantry.”
Lubisich also announced that sales for ZonaZoo passes are down. At the beginning of last year, 8,200 passes were sold. This year, only 8,000 passes were sold.
“That could be that the new athletics fee is the same as a ZonaZoo Pass,” Lubisich said. “So the ZonaZoo director and I we will be working to lower the price of the pass due to the athletic fee.”
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