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Wildcats face Chippewas
Preview Arizona’s football kickoff, an analysis, plus more sports coverage
friday, september 4, 2009
Home turf
VIDEO: Go behind the scenes with UA groundskeepers as they prepare for Arizona Stadium’s home opener at dailywildcat.com
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tucson, arizona
GQ’s college d-bag rankings released!
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
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Bear Down! Beat the Chippewas!
Faculty blog targets president, provost Staff post anonymously amidst ‘culture of fear,’ call for vote of no confidence in Shelton, Hay By Alex Dalenberg and Shain Bergan Arizona Daily Wildcat
The site’s users feel they can’t speak openly about the administration because, “there is a culture of fear on this campus,” Garcia said. Faculty and staff fear dismissals and retaliation for speaking openly about President Robert Shelton and Provost Meredith Hay, he said. Garcia cites his own experience as an example of why faculty may be afraid to question the administration. The professor was forced out as vice president for instruction in June following an e-mail exchange in which he criticized Hay’s decision
UA faculty and staff “concerned about abuses of power at the UA,” have created an anonymous blog as a place to “speak openly, without fear of reprisals.” Juan R. Garcia, a professor of history who posts on the Blogspot.com site “UA Defender,” said he knows the site’s founders, and many faculty, staff, and even a few administrators, who post on the blog.
making in the project that created classes in Centennial Hall. Garcia, and several blog posters, allege there are others with similar stories who have been fired for speaking out against the administration. However, Garcia said his colleagues have asked him not to discuss their particular situations with the media. “I’m one, but there are others,” he said. The blog documents growing resistance among some faculty and
staff to Shelton and Hay. The site’s author, writing under the pseudonym Evelyn B. Hall, posted that “four month’s (sic) into her tenure as provost, the deans were ready to oust Meredith Hay over her budget over-reaching.” Among the blog’s most serious allegations: UA department heads gave Hay an unofficial straw vote of “no confidence” last fall semester. The blog states that although the deans may have been powerful enough
See for yourself Visit the anonymous faculty and staff blog critical of the administration at http://uadefender. blogspot.com
BLOG, page 6
Seeing green
Health students bridge divide
UA makes improvements on campus
By Marissa Hopkins Arizona Daily Wildcat
Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Wildcat
New grass adorns the lawn running down the UA Mall through the heart of campus. The sight of fresh grass pleasantly greeted students this semester after it was proposed and rejected that the Mall would go without a much needed resodding.
By Rikki Mitchell Arizona Daily Wildcat UA’s campus has seen some new improvements since last semester’s budget crisis. New grass was planted on the UA Mall and two campus fountains have been turned back on. Al Tarcola, director of facilities management, said the funding for the new grass came out of revenue collected from the
various vendors who use the Mall. It did not come out of state funding, he said. “They wanted the Mall to look nice for the students and especially the new students that were coming in, so they gave us the money,”Tarcola said. Kim Didra, an art sophomore, thinks new grass on the Mall is a good investment for the UA. “A lot of people do find the Mall a pretty place to be that attracts money to the university,” she said. “It’s a small
investment that pays off because it brings more people in.” In addition to new grass, the fountain in front in the Women’s Plaza of Honor as well as the fountain in front of Old Main have been turned back on. The Old Main fountain was restored roughly a month after the spring semester ended, Tarcola said. “The Old Main fountain is a signature part of the university and represents a memorial to World War I veterans,”he said.
Alumni pay for the Women’s Plaza of Honor fountain, he said. As reported last semester by the Daily Wildcat, the fountain in the Student Union Memorial Center will only be turned on for Dec. 7, in honor of Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona, to which the student union is dedicated. The Alumni Plaza fountain in front of the Administration building will still only be turned on for Homecoming and graduation.
First year students from the colleges of Nursing, Pharmacy and Medicine came together yesterday for two hours in a few University Medical Center classrooms for a workshop designed to teach interdisciplinary communication. Preventable medical errors kill 44,000-98,000 patients each year, College of Medicine professors told students. Many of these errors cite “poor communication” as the reason. Students from these colleges, as well as the colleges of Public Health and Law, participate in a series of different inter-professional workshops throughout their years in school. The workshops are meant to promote successful interaction and understanding between the different professions because they will all be working together after graduation, said Andreas Theodorou, a clinical pediatrics professor. He said medical schools all over the country are putting together inter-professional curriculums to better help patients. This is the fourth year the health profession colleges at the UA have done the workshops, said Nancy Coleman, an associate specialist in pediatric critical care. HEALTH, page 3
Police join forces for football By Lance Madden Arizona Daily Wildcat Arizona Stadium has come a long way since it was built in 1928 and held about 7,000 spectators. It now has a capacity of more than 56,000, and more fans means there’s a need for more security. Because it does not have enough officers to secure Arizona football games, the University of Arizona Police Department is reaching out to several Tucson-based police agencies for help. Tucson Police Department, Pima Country Sheriff’s Department, OroValley Police Department, the Department of Public Safety and A-TEAM Security are all contributing to the public’s wellbeing at UA football games. Sahuarita Police Department, Marana Police Department and Pima Community College Police have also been called upon for extra security at times. “We utilize (outside agencies) in the
same way we would utilize our own people as far as making assignments to ensure the safety and security of the event,” said UAPD’s public information officer, Sgt. Juan Alvarez. Prior to the first home football game each year, supervisors from each participating agency attend a special operations briefing, said Lt. Chris Olson, from Oro Valley Police Department. This briefing encompasses traffic control, basic crowd control, an emergency evacuation procedure and what to do with suspicious packages. Olson said he used to work football games when he was a UAPD officer. During games these days, he sits in one of two command centers at a high level in the stadium with lieutenants from the other agencies. This area is called the Crows’ Nest. The supervisors in the Crows’ Nest act as liaisons for the officers patrolling the stadium down below. If something needs to be shared between
agencies, a supervisor is contacted by radio, allowing the supervisors in the Crows’ Nest to discuss among themselves. They then give instructions to their own officers. This system is referred to as the Incident Command Structure, Alvarez said. Each agency is assigned its own section, or “jurisdictions,” as Olson called it. Olson estimated that each agency is represented by more than a dozen officers, though UAPD Commander Bob Sommerfeld would not release the exact number of officers used per game Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Wildcat for security reasons. “We base the number of officers on An A-TEAM Security guard helps shuffle students into Arizona Stadium last May at the Last Smash Platinum Bash. Security is a top priority for events held at Arizona Stadium. Members of different the crowd, the activity, the venue and branches of law enforcement take on the responsibility of ensuring safety for fans and students. a historical trend looking back at what has occurred during football games,” director of event operations, said that, Officers who work games are Sommerfeld said, “and we have not on average, more than $100,000 is paid the off-duty wage of their own had a situation where we did not have spent on security for a UA football department, though they become enough officers on hand to handle any game. The funding is officially a game- part-time employees of the university situation that we have faced here.” day expense that comes out of Arizona SECURITY, page 6 Suzy Mason, associate athletic Athletics’ expenditures, she said.