MATT SCOTT’S NFL POTENTIAL
SPORTS - 6
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT SENATE BIDS FAREWELL
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LATINO POETS TO READ AT UA POETRY CENTER
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ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Printing the news, sounding the alarm, and raising hell since 1899
THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2013
VOLUME 106 • ISSUE 145
DAILYWILDCAT.COM
UA struggles to keep up with maintenance RACHEL MCCLUSKEY Arizona Daily Wildcat
The UA is working on an analysis and evaluation of deferred maintenance on campus to submit to the Arizona Board of Regents in the next couple of weeks. A deferred maintenance report is issued around July and last year’s report stated that there was $158 million worth of deferred maintenance for the UA. Backlogged maintenance includes a majority of infrastructure, roofing and street issues,
said Chris Kopach, assistant vice president of Facilities Management. Maintenance is allocated by the state of Arizona and has been declining in recent years, Kopach added. The board of regents has taken notice of this problem and will be viewing proposals submitted by Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University and the UA at one of its next meetings. “Right now, what each university is doing is an analysis of an evaluation of the total deferred maintenance need, and then we are going to be reporting to the board of regents to sort of give
them an update and give them options,” said Lorenzo Martinez, the associate vice president for finance and administration for the board. “Each university is developing a plan on how they might best address deferred maintenance. The board of regents now are sort of waiting for the universities to come back with proposed plans.” The UA’s analysis and plan won’t be completed for a couple more weeks, Kopach added. There are a lot of buildings on the campus that are 25 to 50 years old, if not older, Kopach said. However, there are not enough
funds to make repairs to all of the buildings at the same time. “Just UA alone, it’d be similar if you had an apartment building or a house with a leak in the roof and you just didn’t have funds to fix it so you just did temporary patches until you could replace the entire roof,” Kopach said. Bonds allocated by the UA in 2008 for maintenance will be exhausted in June 2014, Kopach said. The UA also issued $25 million in bonds for
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QUOTE TO NOTE Rape is a violent crime. A culture that tolerates rape is a problem, nationally and on campus. It demands solutions. How do we begin to identify those solutions?” OPINIONS - 4
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EMMA HEEGER, a psychology sophomore, flies through the air Wednesday afternoon on the UA Mall. The attraction was just one of many provided as part of the Wildcat Events Board’s Water Park Day, meant to help students relax before finals.
WATER PARK, 3
Graduate assistants and graduate associates will see a pay raise this coming fiscal year after five years of going without. The last raise that graduate assistants received was in 2008, said Zachary Brooks, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council. At the last GPSC general assembly meeting on April 16, Brooks collected input from representatives on raises to bring to the dean of the Graduate College. He then told the dean that the raise was positively received, but said there is still a large gap between wages and the cost of living. However, the raises are a “good first step,” he said. GPSC’s input did not come as a surprise, said Andrew Carnie, dean of the UA Graduate College, in an email interview. “There is widespread dissatisfaction with the compensation and workload requirements for our GA’s,” Carnie said. “GA’s are a critical component of our teaching, research and service missions.” Those who receive their salary through state funds will be impacted immediately. Those who are being funded through grants or other nonstate money will also receive a raise, but it will come later due to outside organizations having to “get more money or to [re-budget],” Carnie said. Carnie is assembling the raise package, which then goes to the UA
SALARIES, 3
2016 mission to analyze asteroid relies on UA staff MAXWELL J MANGOLD Arizona Daily Wildcat
A team of UA faculty and students is playing a central role in an asteroid mission set for 2016. OSIRIS-REx is an asteroid sample return mission with the goal of analyzing, understanding and retrieving a sample from the “volatile and organic-rich remnant” of asteroid 1999 RQ36. The launch will take place in 2016. OSIRIS-REx is an acronym describing aspects of the spacecraft and mission’s planned work; origins, special interpretation, resource identification, security and regolith explorer. Comprised of a partnership between the UA, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Systems and Lockheed Martin, the mission is the third in NASA’s New Frontiers Program and the first US asteroid sampling mission. “For me, going to an asteroid is a different venue and has its own set of different challenges,” said Chris Shinohara, UA science operations center manager. 1999 RQ36 was chosen for the mission because it meets several criteria, including being a near-Earth asteroid, having an optimal orbit and a diameter of more than 200 meters and being a carbonaceous asteroid. In addition to being carbonaceous, which means it holds remnants from the original building blocks of terrestrial planets like Earth, the asteroid is potentially hazardous, with a 1 in 1800 chance of impacting the Earth in 2182, according to the mission’s website. After its “planning and fabrication” phase and launch, the spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid from 2019 to 2021 to analyze it and retrieve at least a 60 gram sample for further inspection. Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator and a lunar and
planetary laboratory professor, said he forsees this being the most challenging part, because the spacecraft will have to “hover” and match the asteroid’s velocity and rotation. Compounding these difficulties, Lauretta and his team won’t be controlling the spacecraft in real time, so “after you hear it, everything will have already happened.” In addition to the sample, the mission will study the Yarkovsky effect, a theory that states that the “daily heating of an object rotating could exert a small force on the object,” according to the mission’s website. If understood, this tiny daily push over time could help mitigate the risk of a 22nd century collision with Earth. Lockheed Martin is currently constructing the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is 6.6 feet on each side with two solar panels a combined 19.7 feet in length and a robot arm that will collect the surface material from the asteroid to return for sampling. After the gravel and debris are returned to Earth, they will be processed through a sample analysis for two years, until 2025, and then will be field checked to affirm or contradict past telescope observations and assumptions. Lauretta recently met with John Holdren, the president’s senior adviser on science and technology issues, who he said was “very excited and very impressed” by the mission. Beyond national higher-ups, the mission has UA students involved and excited as well. Jon Cummings, a computer science junior and student software engineer for the OSIRIS-REx team, said the project not only sets the UA apart from other institutions, but also distinguishes the students working on the endeavor. “It’s definitely cool,” Cummings said, “because employers look for more research focus and academic intrigue I guess, rather than people who just went to school to get their degree and raise
TYLER BESH/ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
DANTE LAURETTA is the manager for the OSIRIS-REx mission, which is going to send a spacecraft to retrieve samples from an asteroid.
their salary.” Seeing this work put to use has also been a rewarding experience, he added. “The coolest part is you’re actually involved in something that matters,” Cummings said. “A lot of the stuff I do in school is academic, like solely academic things that will never be used in the real world. Just things to help you learn basically, and the stuff I’m doing there [on OSIRIS-REx] is actually applicable and you learn a lot of good strategies of working with people in the field, seeing what it’s really like.” Lauretta said that while the longevity of the project requires endurance, he’s learned to appreciate that aspect as well. “I’m in a department, a planetary science lab where you plan missions to Saturn and Jupiter and outer solar systems and in Mars, and you’re used to a decade-long timeline for your operation space,” Lauretta said. “So it’s daunting, certainly, but it’s a great challenge and it’s a great career. I feel very honored to be working on a major NASA project like this.”