UA transfer services excellent

In response to the letters in Mailbag in today’s and recent copies of the Arizona Daily Wildcat, I would like to share my experience of the transfer student orientation and resources, as someone who is about to graduate in May with an undergraduate music degree.

I attended transfer student orientation in April 2004, after having been out of the student role since 1996. I have degrees from two other universities in two different states, and have never had as delightful, thorough and welcoming an experience as the one I had here. The orientation program was an awesome introduction to the U of A. Every resource on campus for every student need one could imagine was discussed. We were fed a very nice meal at the stadium. We had a chance to talk with representatives from our college. We were given stickers, magnets, bookmarks and paperwork describing in exceedingly clear detail how to get everything from a meal plan to a Zona Zoo pass, to acute medical care on campus. We got to hear a brief talk from representatives from CatCard, the libraries, financial aid, Parking and Transportation Services and the Manuel T. Pacheco Integrated Learning Center. Sources for assistance in dealing with transcripts, grades, academic advising, clubs and organizations, career recruiting for soon-to-be-grads, etc., were clearly delineated.

During some of the presentations, especially from departments that should have been key to every orientee’s campus experience, many students just got up from the auditorium and left. I could not fathom why skipping out on information regarding the Bursar’s Office, academic policies, the libraries or campus safety would be an appropriate choice for anyone there.

When my orientation was over, I knew without a doubt that if there was something I needed to make happen at the U of A, I could very easily find out how to do it and who could help me do it. What more can a new student ask for?

Now, I am preparing for registration and my degree check for my last undergrad semester and find I am still using the information obtained at the transfer student orientation to help me navigate these steps. There have been no surprises, largely due to being presented with the “”big picture”” prior to the first day of class.

My experience regarding transfer students and commuter students is that the university has bent over backwards to welcome and support us, and in fact, that administration could not “”care more.””

Laura Boschma
vocal studies senior

Athletes do deserve early registration

I would like to comment on Tuesday’s letter to the editor, “”Athletes should not rule registration,”” stating that athletes should not be allowed early registration. As a former athlete here at Arizona, I can tell the author right now she has no idea of what she is talking about. She says that we should value all students’ extracurricular activities the same. I agree, except being an athlete here at Arizona isn’t an extracurricular activity. It’s a job! For those on scholarship, it’s the reason they are here for school. Of course they should be allowed to register early. Does she think they do it for the hell of it just to play? My typical day looked like this: Up at 5 a.m. Monday through Friday (that’s right, Monday through Friday!) in the weight room at McKale Center for lifting and conditioning at 5:45 a.m. My first class is at 8 and I’m done by noon, then I have study hall from noon to 2 p.m., then we have meetings until we actually go on the field for practice around 4. Practice on the field from 4 to 7, then a quick bite to eat, then back to study table till 9:30. Get home around 10 p.m., then go and do it all over again.

This woman says that we have it easy and that she and any honors student has three times as many activities, and maybe she does. But let me ask her this: How much money do her “”extracurricular activities”” bring to the university? I’m sure not as much as athletics do. She says we should miss an occasional class or miss an occasional game? Obviously she doesn’t know that if we miss class we get punished by the coaching staff and the only reason we do miss it is when we travel, but we still get our lessons sent with us. So while we travel, it’s not all fun and games. We still have all the schoolwork plus the work for our respective sport. Memorizing plays and techniques is not easy as you think when there are at least 500 different plays. I’d like to see her try to be an athlete here; she would realize how much athletics means to not just the university financially, but also it’s providing many of the athletes a chance to gain a education when they would not have been able to because maybe they were too poor and their parents could not afford it. I’m just saying next time you go bashing athletes saying we’re lazy or we should not get special registration rights do some research and digging and you will see just how much we as athletes appreciate small things like that.

Wilson Costa
history senior

Border security not to be sneered at

Throughout the gubernatorial debates held on Oct. 10, Republican candidate Len Munsil kept coming back to how imperative it is to secure our national borders. According to political science senior Jeremy Norden-Paul (quoted in “”Education key in debate,”” Oct. 11), Munsil kept referring to border security because he felt “”threatened.”” In having followed Munsil’s career for many years, I can tell you right now, he never appeared threatened and never appeared anything but cool, calm and confident. Quite unlike Janet Napolitano, whose face turned as red as the College Republicans’ T-shirts on multiple occasions. It takes merely a working brain to understand why Munsil referred to border security on nearly every issue. It is because border security is the issue.

On health care, for instance, anyone that has ever had to sit and wait at the emergency room (as I, a taxpaying American citizen, did for over four hours today) and wait hideous amounts of time for medical attention because the place was filled immigrants who do not speak English, would argue that being an American citizen and not being able to get immediate medical assistance is severely annoying and not to mention a terrible waste of my tax dollars. Hence the need for secure borders.

On the issue of education, Arizona has undeniably sorry test scores. Common sense dictates that this could be largely due to the fact that our public schools are flooded with children who do not speak fluent English. Hence the need for secure borders, so these children are not thrown into classes where they cannot learn.

Napolitano’s insufficient policies on border control have lead to grossly overcrowded hospitals and jails, a severely clogged court system and embarrassing national public school rankings. It was shocking that the Napolitano supporters did not understand how securing national borders is the key to bettering our state. Judging from the repeated murmurs, laughter and otherwise rude and disrespectful outbursts from the liberal peanut gallery at the debates, it is inescapably clear that in-depth thought and logical reasoning is beyond the intelligence level possessed by the liberals at Tuesday night’s event.

Bethany Fourmy
pre-med junior

U.S. still very patriarchal

I would like to respond to Matt Winter’s Monday letter, “”We no longer live in a patriarchal society”” in an attempt to set the record straght. I think Matt is confusing patriarchy with misogyny. According to Webster’s dictionary, patriarchy is a “”control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.”” A misogynistic society is a society that hates women. I agree with Winter in that the majority of American men are most likely pretty woman-friendly, however, we continue to live in a society where the majority of decision making is done by men.

As of 2005, there were 65 women out of 435 elected officials in the House of Representatives, meaning women only make up 14.9 percent of one of the largest branches of government. It’s the same story with the Senate, as women encompass exactly 14 percent of the 100 seats there. Do the math and you will find that there are 14 women out of 100 senators. That’s hardly a representation of the group that covers more than half of the nation’s population. It only gets worse the higher up you look. The Supreme Court boasts one woman of nine judges, proving the court that makes the final decision on issues that strongly impact women’s lives is only 11 percent female. And we all know that there’s no point in looking at the executive branch as zero out of 43 presidents have been women.

As for those other “”patriarchal cultures”” Matt mentions, I’m having trouble finding them. The United States trails behind European countries such as England, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, France and Poland in the election of a female head of state or government, however, it also ranks below Pakistan, communist Yugoslavia and the majority of South America and Africa. That’s pathetic. At the rate America is rushing toward equality, I think it’s more likely that we’ll see a woman pope before we see American women reach a status equivalent to American men.

Colin Holmes
computer science senior