Students might not have known it, but Arizona’s state universities dodged a significant bullet this week. As the Arizona Daily Wildcat reported yesterday, the Arizona Senate Rules Committee killed Senate Bill 1542, a measure that would have prohibited teachers or professors from “”endorsing, supporting or opposing”” political candidates, pending legislation or any “”social, political or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.”” It’s a good thing, too: SB 1542 would have stripped instructors of the important ability to, well, instruct students in a way that is intellectually challenging. For killing a bill that was unnecessary and intrusive, Arizona state legislators (and the student representatives who lobbied them) get a Pass.
EMI Group, labeled by The New York Times as a “”British music giant,”” made waves this week when it announced that it would sell its music on Apple’s iTunes without copy protection. That’s a pretty significant departure from current industry practice, which usually holds that music be imprinted with digital rights management (DRM) so that the music cannot be easily copied or pirated. Apple CEO Steve Jobs called for the end of DRM earlier this year, and the EMI decision represents a major step toward a freer exchange of digital music. For giving customers (especially tech-savvy students) exactly what they want, EMI and Apple get a Pass.
Arizona may be the redheaded stepchild in many instances – higher education and crime, for example – but a new study is bucking the trend, with Arizona coming out on top instead of bottom. Wednesday, The Arizona Republic reported that in 2005, Arizona’s working women earned 83.8 percent of a man’s annual salary, which, surprisingly enough, is well above the national average of a woman earning 77 percent, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. According to the study, out of the 50 states, Arizona’s male-female salary gap was the second smallest. Not so fast, though – one of the reasons Arizona’s gap is so low is that men are earning less than the national average, meaning that women are staying on par. But for paving the wage-gap way (at least for now), Arizona’s working women receive a Pass.
The best situations are when a good thing comes out of something bad, and such is the case in the latest revelation in the college-lending investigation parade. On Wednesday, Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest lender to college students, agreed to pay $2 million to settle an investigation by the New York attorney general’s office, along with a number of other settlement requirements – including adapting a code of conduct specially designed to prevent conflicts of interest with university loan officials. No more gifts to university loan officials or trips to exotic hot-spots. Transparency – especially in college lending procedures – is always a good thing, so every university should be making sure that their loan procedures can weather full disclosure. For doing what’s right, the New York attorney general’s office receives a Pass.
Opinions Board
Editorials are determined by the Wildcat opinions board and written by one of its members. They are Justyn Dillingham, Allison Hornick, Damion LeeNatali, Stan Molever, Nicole Santa Cruz and Matt Stone.
