ABOR Halftime Update
We’ve been tweeting today’s Arizona Board of Regents meeting to excess, but for those readers who prefer their news as something besides a barrage of quick missives, here’s an update on this morning’s meeting:
Killian me softly…
Newly appointed Regent Mark Killian is already living up to expectations as a voice of fiscal reason on the Board. Doing his best “Mr. Smith goes to Tucson,” he’s used his newcomer status to ask more than a few pointed questions and deliver quite a few quips. After starting off by questioning and revising two consent agenda items, he grilled Shelton on rising staff salaries in a recession (“I know of very few businesses today…except for Wall Street, that have not cut salaries”), questioned the logic of a permanent temporary surcharge (“Maybe instead of calling it a one-time surcharge, we should just call it a surcharge”), took a crack at NAU’s Sustainability fee (“Sustainability? Is this to study all that global warming you’ve got sitting on the ground right now?”), and suggested that university presidents appoint a committee to scrutinize their budgets line by line. It’s only halftime, but he’s certainly in the running for Most Valuable Regent at today’s meeting.
‘Relentless efficiency’
Coming in a close second is Regent Anne Mariucci, who last year clinched our coveted MVR award. She’s called more than once for “relentless efficiency” when it comes to cutting costs in university budgets, and moving Arizona tuition closer to “market pricing” for education, suggesting that the price of Arizona education remains artificially low. A good point, but I hope she’ll take care in assessing exactly which market we’re competing in, and keep an eye on quality. Watch for more in the discussion of differential tuition to come.
Fee roll-up
President Shelton presented his tuition proposal, complete with last-minute revisions that would cut fees in half and phase them in fully over several years, and a reduction in his originally planned tuition increase. After a discussion on whether the temporary “economic recovery surcharge” should be made permanent as a surcharge or rolled into tuition, and reconsideration of the $24/year Sustainability fee, which President Shelton eliminated from his proposal, the Regents voted to set in-state tuition at $8,237 and out-of-state tuition at $24,569. The Daily Star has a full breakdown. The tuition increase makes the temporary surcharge a permanent tuition increase of $766, and includes a $24 increase to cover campus sustainability instead of a fee, essentially rolling what once would have been two separate fees into one tuition hike.
The fees stand alone
Following a quick break for Two Minutes Hate toward the legislature, ASU President Michael Crow and NAU President John Haeger presented their tuition proposals. Little of relevance here to UA students, but it’s worth noting that ASU students actually voted on their student services fee, and NAU students voted on both sustainability and a proposed student government fee, leaving President Shelton as the only Arizona university president to present only fees unapproved in referenda [UPDATE 2:26pm: or by student government -ECM] to the Regents. Regents President Ernest Calderon also urged ASU President Crow to “ask the Board of Regents to ride the AAU” and seek recognition as a leading research university, a move that might further muddle the three-university model. After approving a two-year exception to ABOR fee policy to allow for differential tuition proposals, the Board moved on to consider proposed differential tuition increases, a discussion that will continue after the break.
We’ll be tweeting again as soon as the Board reconvenes after lunch.
2010 ASUA Election Results Live Stream
This no-longer-live stream features about nine minutes of breathless anticipation before the elections announcements actually commence. Scroll forward to around 8:50 for the good stuff.
UPDATE: Props to the Elections Commission for getting the complete results up on the ASUA site. Saves us some time, anyways. Complete results follow below the fold:
ASUA Senate Report, 10 March 2010
At this week’s Senate meeting (agenda available here), the Senate approved $10,787.60 in club funding for sixteen groups. Tom Bourgeois, an “implementation director” for the Mosaic Project, offered a presentation on the new UAccess system. The Senate also heard an informational item on the last-minute negotiations behind this year’s tuition battle, hearing both the tuition proposal offered by President Nagata as well as the hot-off-the-press counterproposal from President Shelton [PDF].
Check below the fold for updates throughout the day.
Policy Survey Update
Thanks to more than a little fee madness and a few unexpected limitations of Google Docs, we’ve had a hell of a time compiling this year’s policy survey. We’re hard at work on preparing an easy to read summary, but since voting is already underway, we’re publishing the raw data ahead of time. Take a look at this year’s whopping crop of seven candidate responses at this link.
UPDATE [7:18pm]: Compiled data and charts are now available here.
UPDATE [8:35pm]: I’ll post candidate profiles here as I finish them:
- Jarret Benkendorfer (Senate)
- Gabriella Castillon (Senate)
- Emily Fritze (President)
- Trevor Hill (Senate)
- Brett Ponton (Administrative Vice President)
- Scott Rising (Senate)
- Dominick San Angelo (Senate)
ASUA Actual Elections 2010: Endorsements, Warnings, and other random bits
Guess what Iraqi voters have that ASUA voters don't.
“Well, it’s a well-run campaign. Midget and broom and whatnot.”
-Spivey, in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
ASUA voting starts in a matter of hours, yet we’re still missing both midgets and brooms. Some disassociated notes:
Where’d my Campus Policy survey go? The same eternal bog that traps the legions of Quincitilus Varus. The project has unfortunately gotten lost in the shuffle of FeeFest 2010 and pro bono quasi-legal work; but we promise that it’ll be up before elections are over.
Grad-rush the Show. Although the continued push for anchluss by ASUA is generally bad for graduates, it does offer some possibilities for high-grade shenanigans. Since ASUA insists on being the “student government” for the entire student body – in spite of graduate insistence that GPSC is representing them just fine, thank you very much – it affords grad students the privilege to vote in their elections. Grad students who are sick of the Banality Brigade should take five minutes of their day to sway this government while they still can.
Strategic voting for the Senate. While the executive elections are pretty straight-forward (two-thirds Eritrea, one-third election), the “approval voting” system for the Senate diverges from typical ballots, and leads to somewhat unwise voting behavior. Specifically, voters tend to see the “choose ten” provision and think that it’s mandatory; and even if they don’t consider it mandatory, they approach it the way your author approaches an open bar – “Take as much as you can – get your money’s worth!”
Unless you genuinely support ten candidates, though, this is a bad voting strategy. Read the rest of this entry »
A Brief History of Fees: Part I
"When the dynasty continues in power and their rulers follow each other in succession, they become sophisticated… Then, gradual increases in the amount of the assessments succeed each other regularly, in correspondence with the gradual increase in the luxury customs and many needs of the dynasty and the spending required in connection with them. Eventually, the taxes will weigh heavily upon the subjects and overburden them. Heavy taxes become an obligation and tradition, because the increases took place gradually, and no one knows specifically who increased them or levied them. They lie upon the subjects like an obligation and tradition." —Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah
Introduction
Lately, we’ve been mad about fees here at the Lamp, and as part of that process, I’ve done quite a bit of research on the origins of the mandatory fees University of Arizona students pay today. The arc of history at a large university like ours is a curious thing to try and observe. Few students manage to perceive phenomena that take place over more than four years. Some faculty have a longer memory, but it is administrators who are really responsible for the long-term projects that outlive most students. Meanwhile, tide after tide of student government leaders and Wildcat journalists washes in as freshmen and out a few years later, arguing over perennial issues in a cycle that befits Ibn Khaldun.
When I worked at the Wildcat, I would often flip through the big bound volumes of old issues while waiting for copy to come in or a page to print. The experience was always surreal. The same stories appear year after year: the same silly political scandals, the same editorials decrying official incompetence, and the same apathetic election results. Once in a while a bizarre difference jumps out, like the early-70s campaign by ASUA leaders to allow drinking on campus. Other times, the parallels are uncanny. I once found a column urging abolition of student government that was nearly a copy of my own—written some twenty years earlier. And right next to the timeless cycles of student government, the AP articles move on from Watergate to revolution in Tehran to the fall of the Berlin wall.
The student newspaper is just about the only campus institution that preserves some unbiased account of the way things were. That’s all the more reason to ensure that it remains aggressively independent and comfortably solvent. The following summary draws on over a hundred Wildcat articles chronicling past fees and fee proposals. I owe an awful lot to those student journalists who put in the effort to report the stories in the first place.
So without any more rumination on the nature of history, allow me to take you on a strange journey—all the way back to the Reagan administration. Or, if you’d like to jump to a particular fee, hit the jump and click the anchor links below.
ASUA Executive Debate Summary
Ciceronian rhetoric was not one of the highlights of tonight's debate
The ASUA Executive Debates tonight were tinged with irony, considering two of the candidates- Emily Fritze for ASUA President and Katherine Weingartner for Executive VP- are running unopposed. But, to the commissions credit, the format of the debate was a step in the right direction. Candidates were subject to questioning from individuals representing an eclectic group of interests. Organizations represented included CSIL, NA Student Affairs, the Student Fee Allocation Board, GPSC, ASUA (via outgoing President Nagata), the Panhellenic Council, the Intrafraternity council, the NCLC, and the RHA. The format of the debates themselves, however, was lacking coherence. One candidate would usually field a question, and after he/she was finished, the other candidate would rebut with another question. Baby steps, I suppose.
Without further ado, here’s the summary:
Should the Slaughterhouse Cases be Overturned?
In our previous post, we mentioned Alan Gura’s attempt to get the court to rethink the way it incorporates federal rights guaranteed by the constitution. Recent history has seen the court increasingly rely on the “due process” clause of the 14th amendment, which has allowed it to be relatively selective in choosing which rights to scrutinize more closely. Reverting back to the “privileges and immunities” clause would allow for a more comprehensive incorporation, however, and would prevent states from infringing on citizens’ fundamental rights–both enumerated and unenumerated. Despite the less-than-favorable response Gura’s argument received from the judges, originalist legal scholars have publicly declared their support for his call for Slaughterhouse to be overturned. Further, in a series of mock trial interviews conducted leading up to the oral arguments, conservative organizations throughout the country made their opposition to overturning the Slaughterhouse Cases quite clear. The Heritage Foundation in particular is concerned about the political implications of such a turn-around. The irony of the situation is particularly poignant, considering the roles were reversed during the recent CU vs. FEC fiasco.
After the Supreme Court ruled that the corporations were entitled to their first amendment rights, Liberal organizations came out in droves decrying what they saw as the death of democracy. Their argument, however, dealt little with the reality of corruption, but rather the perception of corruption– the expecation that evil, conservative, corporate giants would come to dominate the political dialogue through bribery and blackmail. Much of the conservative opposition to this case is employing a similar line of argument. The Heritage Foundation is concerned that, should incorporation via the privileges and immunities clause find favor with the court once more, the federal government will be able to incorporate other contentious rights like abortion, welfare, etc… Expectation, not reality, is driving their fears.
When Students Voted: The 2005 Solar Panel Fee
An amazing article from back in 2005 on the “solar panel fee”:
More than 4,000 students signed a club’s petition to install solar panels on a UA building, but Eclipse members are not likely to see their proposed student fee on the upcoming Associated Students of the University of Arizona ballot.
. . .
They want the students to vote in favor of a $2 fee to help fund solar panels to power one of the buildings on campus.
“It’s a $1 fee per semester, but only for one year,” said Nicole Sanderson, founder of Eclipse. “This money will provide 10 kilowatts of power per semester, and the fee is refundable and we will encourage students to get their refund.”
Where once the “Green Fee” was $2 and refundable, it is now $24 – and mandatory. Where once it was designed to sunset after one year, the sustainability fee has no such provision. Since it was not put to a vote, and since there is no review process in place, it will go into perpetuity – and thanks to law of diminishing returns and a policy of perpetual fees, there will soon come a time when students pay more in fees than they get back in ‘energy efficiency’. Read the rest of this entry »
McDonald vs. Chicago: Summary and Links
On March 2nd the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a case that has the potential toe extend the 2nd amendment rights afforded to private citizens in “federal enclaves” via Heller vs. DC to citizens in states and localities throughout the country. Reason has been providing in depth coverage as the case develops, so there is not much to add. It’s worth noting, however, that the attorney for the Plaintiff, Alan Gura, took the brave step of arguing that the court should revive the “privileges and immunities” clause of the 14th amendment, which, in recent history, has been neglected in favor of the legally nebulous “due process” clause, leading to the arbitrary incorporation of constitutional rights.
The Justices (strangely, considering they opted to listen to Gura’s amibitious argument over the NRA’s due process approach) by and large laughed off the attempt to overturn the infamous Slaughterhouse Cases and apply the “privileges and immunities” clause. It’d also be a mistake to assume that a ruling in favor of the state of Illinois would be a victory for federalism. Via Damon Root:
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! PIRG Petition-Pushers Fall Short!
Courtesy of PIRG’s facebook page, posted at 7:16 PM today:
Arizona PIRG at the University of Arizona So, a big huge rawkin’ thank you to the over 2000 of you who signed a petition… Unfortunately, the language is unclear and you can’t use your catcard number… As a result, we need 3700 by Tuesday at Noon! Sound familiar? We need your help!!!!
Foiled once again! I am not sure what to make of the claim that “the language is unclear” considering this is what PIRG volunteers are trained to do– collect signatures. Nevertheless, thanks to the organization’s own failure to account for the vagaries of the election code, its initial push at collecting the requisite signatures for a general ballot vote has failed. This much was confirmed by election commissioner Justine Piscitello at the Senate debate forum held tonight. Apparently, PIRG has already picked “up additional forms for a special election.” Further, given vaguely defined “time constraints,” the election commission has decided to “expedite” the process by requiring that the signatures be submitted on Tuesday by noon. For their part, the election commission has also agreed to shorten its verification process, should PIRG succeed in meeting its target of 3700 signatures.
A few questions still remain. For one, will PIRG try to use the 2000 legitimate signatures they collected previously for the special election ballot? The situation certainly leaves PIRG on a sticky wicket, as collecting 3700 signatures over a period four and a half days is by no means a simple task. And, given the election code’s failure to address referenda at all, PIRG will certainly be tempted to reuse the 2000 legitimate signatures they did collect during the general election process. This, however, would be a mistake. The two-thousand individuals who did choose to support the PIRG did so under the impression that the fee proposal would be on the general election ballot. Asking students to support a special election for the PIRG fee is a different question and it requires distinct signatures.
UPDATE: According to PIRG organizer Wendy Whitney Kraner, AZ PIRG will not be using the 1,768 valid signatures in their signature push for a special election.
GPSC Meeting, 3 March 2010 [UPDATE]
by Brian Mori
RESIGNATION RESULTS FROM REPRESENTATIVES’ RESISTANCE
The debate over student fees came to a head at last night’s GPSC meeting with the resignation of President David Talenfeld and the announcement of the resignation retirement of Campus Recreation Director Juliette Moore.
Talenfeld spoke briefly at the opening of Wednesday’s meeting to reiterate his support for over $600.00 in student fee increases for Fall 2010.
“The solutions to our states’ critical deficit problems can only come in the form of compromise and on the backs of all stakeholders … in our case that’s students,” He said.
Wildcats face a tuition and fee increase total of $2,766 (in-state) if proposals by University of Arizona President Robert Shelton are approved by the Arizona Board of Regents March 11. Read the rest of this entry »