VISIT A SLICE OF THE SOUTHWEST ONLINE AT
LACKLUSTER PRACTICE HAS RICHROD ANGRY
YOU DON’T NEED TO GIVE $30 TO KONY 2012
DAILYWILDCAT.COM
SPORTS — 6
PERSPECTIVES — 4
DAILY WILDCAT
Thursday, march ,
DAILYWILDCAT.COM
SERVING THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA SINCE 1899
DRINKING UP
Regents target funding disparity By Samantha Munsey DAILY WILDCAT
The UA currently ranks the highest in funding per student compared to the other Arizona public universities, although the state is trying to fix that. Lawmakers approved a proposal presented by the Arizona Board of Regents to give $15.3 million total to Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University to fix a disparity among the three institutions during a Senate committee meeting on March 8. The proposal was created after the state required the board to calculate the average funding per student and discovered a $75 million disparity among the three universities. During a September board meeting in Flagstaff, state university presidents developed a plan to fix the disparity in five years Funding that would help equalize fundper ing per student student among the three universities. “What is im$6,598 portant to note UA is that the three universities very $5,702 worked closely and were ASU in complete consensus with the $5,840 solution they came up with,” NAU said Sarah Harper, director of Source: Arizona Board public affairs for of Regents the board. “The whole idea is to get on equal footing.” In 2011, the board gave the Legislature a report that showed the disparity. The UA receives $6,598 per student, $896 more than ASU’s per-student funding and $758 more than NAU’s. The proposal will help fund technology improvements and course redesign for the two universities, as well as support expansion. ASU and NAU have continued to build up their campuses over the past 10 years, and they will need the additional funds to continue to do so. The UA doesn’t have the same opportunities for growth, however, given the limits of its
FUNDING, 2
QUOTE TO
NOTE
“
We didn’t practice well enough to have any players sit there and give their opinion of how practice went.”
SPORTS — 6
HI
83 52 LOW
Winesburg, Ohio Champaign, Ill. Binger, Okla.
81 / 55 73 / 55 56 / 40
KEVIN BROST / DAILY WILDCAT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a recent study that shows binge drinking occurs most often in Southwestern states.
Study shows binge drinking more prominent in places with a higher population of college students By Elliot P. Hopper DAILY WILDCAT
Students may need to rethink their Thirsty Thursday plans, as a new study shows that binge drinking is becoming more and more of a problem in college towns. Binge drinking — having a blood concentration level of at least 0.08 percent or about nine drinks per sitting — has now become a bigger problem
than originally thought, according to a study recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study showed that binge drinking has become especially prominent in Southwestern states, such as Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada. These states are heavily populated by college students, making residing in these states more prone to binge drinking, the study said. More than 38 million people
between the ages of 18 and 25 binge drink four times per month, which can lead to more than 80,000 alcoholrelated deaths per year, according to the study. This includes deaths from motor vehicle accidents, alcohol poisoning and associated health problems. The study also showed that 90 percent of the time, this age group binge drinks instead of drinking a more moderate amount. Some UA students, like economics
senior Zachary Smith, don’t see binge drinking as a big issue. “I had never thought that the people around me were much of binge drinkers,” he said. Smith also said that one of his friends spent more than $500 on alcohol during spring break, and had on average about 20 drinks each sitting. David Salafsky, director of Health
DRINKING, 2
War veteran pursues dream Medical to be residential architect school growth a L concern By Rachel Gottfried DAILY WILDCAT
osing his right arm and both legs in battle did not deter Brian Kolfage, 30, from coming to the UA to study architecture. After being wounded while serving in Iraq, Kolfage sees architecture as a way to make living more convenient for others. Now in his third year as an architecture student, Kolfage said he has refused to let his disability hold him back. On Sept. 11, 2004, while stationed for a second term in Iraq, a 107-millimeter mortar shell landed near Kolfage, “nearly liquefying his two legs and slicing his right arm, near the wrist, and left thumb.” “I was laying on the ground, unconscious, for the first 30 seconds. Then I was trying to figure out what had happened. I tried standing up, but nothing was working at all,” he said. “I thought I was dreaming.” Kolfage was in surgery for more than eight hours, going through nearly 21 pints of blood. After being stabilized, he was put on a C-17 aircraft retrofitted as an air hospital and flown to Germany. From September 2004 to February 2005, Kolfage underwent 16 surgeries, washing out the remnants of sand and metal from his body. One of the surgeries replaced his left thumb, requiring doctors to remove a bone from his right hip. While recovering, Kolfage saw other military personnel who had suffered traumatic brain injuries in combat and no longer remembered their spouses or families. “When I saw that, it clicked in my head,” he said. “Your limbs are not a necessity, but your brain is. I was motivated to move on.” When Kolfage returned to the U.S., he decided to move to Tucson. He didn’t want just a boring desk job, he said, so he decided to pursue his dream of having a career in architecture. “Being in the military I was kind of rebellious and anti-school, and I think going to school you learn so much stuff, and the way everything works
By Stephanie Casanova DAILY WILDCAT
KEVIN BROST / DAILY WILDCAT
Brian Kolfage is a war veteran and a third-year architecture student. He is now one of the top students in his class.
in the world. You get a broader understanding of the world,” he said. During his first year, it would take Kolfage twice as long to do his assignments as he needed to learn how to use his left hand. Although it was time consuming, after Kolfage got through that first year, he said it was “pretty much a cake walk through everything else.” Kolfage is now one of the top students in his class.
VETERAN, 2
President Eugene Sander addressed concerns about employee salaries and the growth of the two UA medical schools on Wednesday at his third town hall-style meeting this semester. Attendees spoke about wanting to make the University of Arizona Medical Center a “destination care center,” meaning a more well-known hospital. Sander emphasized focusing on improving one program at a time in order to gradually gain national recognition. “Remember we live in Arizona, and the idea is we need to be specifically driven toward things that are most important to our state, where we have a competitive edge, where we can get absolutely as well as it can be done any place in the world,” Sander said. Sander commented on the state’s fiscal budget and the need for money to be appropriated toward Tucson and the UA. He said he hopes this year would be the last that UA administrators would have to “continually worry” about asking the Legislature to help fund the medical school in Phoenix.
TOWN HALL, 2