UA SHOULD FOLLOW HOSPITAL, BAN SMOKING ON CAMPUS
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SERVING THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA SINCE 1899
Res Life policy may assume misconduct By Stewart McClintic DAILY WILDCAT
Each semester some students are put on deferred eviction for violating the Residence Life code of conduct, yet some say they were wrongly accused of any misconduct. Chris Fauntleroy, an undeclared freshman, said he was placed on deferred eviction because his dorm room in Hopi Lodge smelled like marijuana. He said one day last semester he heard a knock on his dorm room door, and opened it to find University of Arizona Police Department officers waiting outside. The officers came in because they said the room smelled marijuana. After they searched his
room and found nothing, Fauntleroy said he was still punished and placed on deferred eviction. Another student claimed a similar thing happened to her. Angelica Luczak, a nutritional sciences freshman, said she wasn’t even in her dorm when officers said they smelled marijuana. She said one day while she was in class, UAPD officers came and knocked on her door, and her roommate opened it for them. When she got back, she was informed by her hall’s resident assistant that she had been written up, and soon after she was placed on deferred eviction. “Just because it allegedly smelled like weed I got put on deferred eviction,” Luczak said.
Joey Lapidus, an undeclared freshman, said he was in a situation where he also felt he was punished unfairly. He said he was in a friend’s dorm room where there was marijuana present, and although he himself did not possess any, he was written up and placed on deferred eviction. “We don’t have anything to do with Residence Life punishments,” said Juan Alvarez, UAPD’s public information officer. Alvarez said that if they find sufficient evidence of a student smoking marijuana, then that student will be punished in congruence with Arizona law. The officers who respond to marijuana complaints within the dorms
look for some specific signs of a student smoking marijuana. These may include the scent of marijuana, bloodshot eyes, leftover residue in the mouth, a discoloration of the tongue and associated paraphernalia like pipes, papers and containers, Alvarez said. Although the officers look for certain signs, Alvarez said that “it’s hard to generalize because every person reacts (to marijuana) differently.” Jim Van Arsdel, assistant vice president of Student Affairs and University Housing, said Residence Life is not going out of its way to look for students that violate the code of conduct, but if a violation occurs, they will pursue it.
According to Van Arsdel, a student can be punished and evicted from their residence hall for a number of reasons. Some violations like dealing drugs, possessing a weapon or stealing or tampering with fire safety mechanisms can result in an immediate eviction. “Very seldom does this occur,” Van Arsdel said. The reason students are placed on deferred eviction and not kicked out immediately, he said, is because in most cases, there is a potential opportunity for the students to learn from their mistakes, so deferred eviction may act as a warning. “Do it again and you’re out,” Van Arsdel said.
Abolition gathering addresses trafficking By Savannah Martin DAILY WILDCAT
ROBERT ALCARAZ / DAILY WILDCAT
A worker polishes the new mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope in the UA Steward Observatory on Saturday. The 27-foot mirror is the second of seven that will cast for the project, which began in 2005.
Giant telescope upgraded with cast of second mirror By Kyle Mittan DAILY WILDCAT
The second mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope was cast in the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory on Saturday. The Giant Magellan Telescope, which began its design phase for the mirrors in 2005, will have 10 times the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope, and, once operational, will equate to 100 billion people looking at the sky at one time. Once components of the telescope are constructed, they will be transported to Chile, and the entire unit will be assembled and situated atop Las Campanas peak in the Andes Mountains as part of the Las Campanas Observatory. From here, astronomers will be able to view the southern hemisphere free from light pollution and other disturbances. The 27-foot mirror was the second of seven primary mirrors to be cast since the project’s inception in 2005. The remaining primary mirrors will also be cast at the mirror lab, which,
according to Pat McCarthy, the project’s director, is the only place this project can be done. “The UA has just a fantastic astronomy department that has such a long history both in building telescopes and using them to do great science that they’re a natural partner,” McCarthy said. “Under Professor (Roger) Angel, they’ve really developed this unique, one-of-a-kind capability to make large, astronomical optics that have just superb performance. We wanted to build a really big telescope like this and do it in a university environment; the U of A is the only place to do it.” The casting process for one mirror takes 12 to 13 weeks. While about 20 tons of glass are used to produce each mirror, the final product is much lighter, as it is molded using a honeycomb pattern which provides a stable, yet lightweight structure. The glass is then heated to about 2,156 degrees and spun in a rotating oven where it flows as a liquid into the mold. While spinning, the mirror takes the desired
concave shape, then finally becomes rigid during the 11 to 12-week cooling process. After being ground and polished, it is transported to the site by truck where it is mounted and tested. According to Peter Strittmatter, the Steward Observatory director and member of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization board of directors, it is theoretically possible to make the mirrors larger, but mirrors with a larger diameter wouldn’t fit through the mirror lab’s bay door, and would be nearly impossible to transport. Funding for the $700 million project is split between partners, who usually pay 10 percent of the construction and operation costs and receive a 10 percent share for usage of the telescope, according to McCarthy. Different partners get their funding from various sources, McCarthy said. The U.S. receives its funding from gifts or financial resources within universities. Recently, a contribution of $25 million was made by George P. Mitchell, founder of the Mitchell Energy and Development
Corporation. Mitchell’s contribution paid for the majority of the first mirror, which has been named after him. According to scientists working in the mirror lab, constructing the mirrors at the UA adds to the university’s reputation and prestige as an institution known for making groundbreaking advancements and discoveries. “We are making one of the singlemost challenging and expensive parts of the telescope,” Strittmatter said. “It clearly continues to send a loud message to the world as to what a great place the University of Arizona is ... Like any other research field, you always have to be moving forward with more powerful instrumentation; otherwise, you get left behind with the others. For us, this represents a key step forward to ensure that we remain at the cutting edge.” Online at DAILYWILDCAT.COM Check out more pictures of the Giant Magellan Telescope at dailywildcat.com
Student injured in accident abroad By Eliza Molk DAILY WILDCAT
When Diane Contreras, mother of a UA student, heard that her son had been in a motorcycle accident while studying abroad, she never thought she would have to find approximately $50,000 to fly him back to Tucson for proper treatment. “I was caught off guard about the details of evacuation insurance,” she said. “I wish I would have investigated that more.” Justin Contreras, a 19-year old who was studying aboard in Guatemala, was a passenger in a motorcycle crash that occurred on a remote
Nicaraguan island. Justin Contreras’ friend he had met the day before was driving the motorcycle back from their overnight to Nicaragua, Diane Contreras said, when a drunk driver on another bike hit her son head on. His study abroad program ended on Dec. 9, 2011, the same day his study abroad insurance had expired. This insurance covers expenses associated with medical evacuation to a home country, which Justin Contreras needed on Dec. 12, 2011, the day the accident PHOTO COURTESY OF SHANNON MCCARTHY-CONTRERAS happened. His twin sister, Shannon McCarthy-Contreras, and his Justin Contreras, a UA student who studied abroad in Guatemala in December, was a passenger in a motorcycle accident and is currently being treated at a reha-
ACCIDENT, 8 bilitation center in Phoenix.
Activists, students, professors and community members from across the country attended Tucson’s first-ever regional abolition conference on Saturday to network, learn and confront the issue of human trafficking. Human trafficking is the “recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them,” according to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. A simpler definition is forcing someone, whether by physical force, manipulation, threats or other methods, to engage in any type of work against his or her will. Many of the activists at Saturday’s conference defined human trafficking as modern-day slavery. Experts and anti-trafficking organizations estimate that 27 million men, women and children are enslaved worldwide. Human trafficking is a $31 billion industry, and two million children are exploited in the sex trade alone. “It’s a really big problem that a lot of people in the United States know very little about, so our goal is to make more and more regular citizens aware that the problem exists right here in Southern Arizona and it exists around the entire globe,” said Karna Walter, director of nationally competitive scholarships at the Honors College and chair of Southern Arizona Against Slavery. “Then hopefully education and awareness lead to action and combating the problem.” The Abolition Conference
ABOLITION, 3
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The Arizona women’s basketball team has played the game of good cop, bad cop this season, and it’s doing it with the NCAA tournament selection committee.” SPORTS — 6 HI
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Venus, Texas Jupiter, Fla. Mars, Pa.
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