UA continues wasteful ways

On my way into the Student Recreation Center today, there were two UA workers using a pressurized hose to spray down the outside concrete. We’re supposed to be in a financial crisis (and water shortage) and yet the university feels the need to spend money on water, several workers and gas to power the machine to clean an area that looks perfectly fine. This year within my major alone (Spanish translation and interpretation) two courses that are required to graduate have been canceled. It infuriates me to see this sort of wasteful spending. The message the UA sent me today was that cleaning off the outside of the Rec is more important to them than providing students with the education they have paid for. If we feel the absolute necessity to clean off the outside concrete, perhaps we could do it in a more efficient way, say use a broom, instead of wasting gallons and gallons of water, especially since we’re in the desert. To add to that, they were still spraying water after I had been in the Rec for over an hour, one of the workers just watching the other work, and the area looked even messier than it had before I went in. This was the second time this week I saw the outside being sprayed down with water, in the same location.

Heather Tarpey
Spanish and philosophy senior

Wildcat rife with errors

As a long-time student of the University of Arizona, and now an employee, I have become increasingly dismayed by the Wildcat’s copy editing skills. However, it seemed to be via isolated incidents that the spelling and grammar demons would strike our humble newspaper.

Not so in Tuesday’s front page article “”Forced furloughs upset some faculty.””

In said article we, the readers, were barraged by various errors from “”differed compensation””, (which was clearly supposed to read “”deferred compensation”” and was mentioned multiple times) to the following sentence: “”Downing said this would reduce the overall budget of the University while not permanently effecting employees.”” The effect/affect difference has clearly escaped university-level English classes.

We certainly can’t expect to be anything more than a second-class educational institution if we cannot discern one homonym from the next.

Kaytee Cobb
Appointed personnel

Innovative answer to JFA

Every year, across campuses, the anti-choice group Justice For All (http://www.jfaweb.org/) travels across the U.S., visiting college campuses. This week, they’re back at the University of Arizona. Normally, we, the students just get into a big fight over this. There are a ton of people yelling at each other, nothing is really resolved and everyone just ends up with hurt feelings.

This is probably impossible to prevent, given the subject matter. This year, however, I hoped to at least turn it into a positive. Inspired by the donations given to GLBT organizations for the Rick Warren invocation, I plan to donate to at least $5-$10 for every day this exhibit is on campus to Planned Parenthood.

I am greatly encouraging others to do the same, with whatever amount they can comfortably afford. It may not be enough to make a massive difference in sex education or birth/STD prevention – but if this can help one woman, it’s enough for me, and it’s certainly more than the JFA group is doing. I’ve just started an open Facebook group to this end.

Right now, it is focused on the University of Arizona, but it is an open group, and I’m hoping I can get many other students and non-students to join and help out. At some point, I plan to let JFA know just how much money they’ve raised for a great organization.

To donate directly to Planned Parenthood, please visit http://www.plannedparenthood.org/.

Matt Borgard
computer science senior