Note: We actually posted this last night, but due to some wordpress-induced technical issues we don’t understand, the post refused to stay up. Not to worry, everything is back in order.

It’s the time of year again. In lieu of the start of the semester, the Daily Wildcat has begun to publish a series of articles that evidently seek to ease the transition process for the incoming freshman class, a bright-eyed horde filled to the brim with elan, optimism, and dreams for the future. Poor bastards. Thankfully, the Lamp is here to inject the transition process with a much-needed shot of sedative realism. First up, the Wildcat’s guide to “Friendly faces in high places.”

First and foremost, the borderline sycophantic tone of the article is shameful. High places? Really? Like the fifth floor of the Administration building? A healthy dose of skepticism is a desirable quality generally, but among college students it’s indispensable. Administrators, as you will find out soon enough, have a nasty habit of refusing to see students for what they are: adults with constitutionally guaranteed rights. Look no further than UA’s policy on gun rights, free speech, and wholesome off-campus beer-fueled fun. In this regard, the Wilcat’s roster is a veritable UA Shit List™.

Robert Shelton

President Robert Shelton was inaugurated in 2006 as the 19th president of the university. Prior to his appointment, he was provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since his inauguration, he has expressed a commitment to becoming one of the top research universities in the nation.

Where to start? Illegal political lobbying for Prop 100? Or perhaps the exorbitant fees he has sought to levy on the student body, despite the fact that the actual destination of the vast majority of the money remains obfuscated behind a veneer of “21st century education” and “accessibility?” Better yet, what about Sheltron’s unwillingness to confront, or even acknowledge, a disastrous admissions policy that is turning the UA into a research institution with an undergraduate funding mechanism, instead hiding behind a facade of vacuous “diversity” rhetoric? Frankly, the Wildcat summary says it all. He’s determined to make UA one of the “top research universities in the nation,” but seems willing to watch UA as an undergraduate institution go down in a blaze of mediocrity. More below the fold:

Meredith Hay

It took a committee of 27 people and nearly a year-long search to find her, but Executive Vice President and Provost Meredith Hay was eventually hired in 2008. Hay left her position as vice president of research at the University of Iowa to become the UA’s chief academic officer and overseer of all UA academic programs.

This little blurb reveals a lot more about Provost Hay than the writer probably intended. The amount of time it took to reach a consensus on Hay was but a precursor to the faculty-wide resentment that come to a head during the TRANSFORMATION. Anything but a friendly face, Hay’s heavy-handed treatment of department heads and her manipulative behind-the-scenes strategizing made her quite possibly the most reviled administrator at the UA. Of course, all of the alienation and covert operation belied the fact that she evidently had no idea what she was doing. If the fates of so many people were not in their hands, the duo of Shelton and Hay could have been a mildly entertaining good cop/bad cop sitcom duo. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Melissa Vito

Vice President for Student Affairs and UA alumna Melissa Vito held various positions at the university for almost three decades, first in financial aid and later as dean of students. In 2007, she assumed her role as vice president to oversee student involvement and non-academic support services. Vito supervises many of the departments that will matter the most to you in college, including Arizona Student Unions, Campus Recreation, Greek Life and Residence Life.

If the Lamp has a nemesis, surely it is Melissa Vito. Relatively low-profile, Vito has nonetheless been steadily and stealthily climbing the administrative ladder for years, and now finds herself in a position with the authority to affect change in virtually every sphere of student life. If history is any indication, this is a source of concern. In the midst of the Lamp’s local media blitz last spring, we made it a point to really delve into the issue of fees and in particular how the fee process has evolved over the years. Strangely enough, as we went deeper, Melissa Vito’s name began to pop up with greater frequency. She’s been instrumental in curtailing the student body’s right to referenda since 1997 and the subsequent rise of the erevnocracy that frames the fee process today.

The roots of today’s fee-by-survey process, which bypasses actual student votes, go back to this proposal for the first Union fee. In January 1997, Dean of Students Melissa Vito hired an outside firm, Field Market Research, to conduct a 500-person telephone survey to assess student support for a potential student union fee. Quoted in the Daily Wildcat, Vito explained why hiring an external firm was critical to collect unbiased results: “If you look at the different ways to collect information, this is the best way to do it and it is objective, because it’s not us doing it”. The principle wouldn’t last long. A few phone calls later, the events that would ultimately lead to today’s fee approval process–in which marketing surveys conducted in-house have replaced fair student elections–were underway.

That’s how it all began. Fast-forward to 2004, when the first omnibus “Student Activity fee” was passed. Guess who was at the center of this effort.

From this point on, the fee process would come straight from the playbook of the First Union Fee in 1997. And a familiar coach would guide the process from the sidelines: Dean of Students Melissa Vito. The Wildcat reported that Vito “started working closely with ASUA once she heard students from the Collaboration Board had voiced interest in a student fee.” The first step was the same as 1997. Vito would sponsor “a market survey … to figure out what will keep students from leaving campus to party at night.” Vito even hired the same firm, FMR Associates, to conduct the poll.

Yeah. Though not as visible as Hay or Shelton, Melissa Vito has, for three decades, been to the go-to-person for the administration’s dirty work. Immune from the public scrutiny directed towards her more visible colleagues, Vito has been willing to relentlessly push the administrative agenda at whatever the cost.

ASUA (and President Emily Fritze)

The Associated Students of the University of Arizona, the UA’s undergraduate student government, is comprised of the ASUA Senate, two vice presidents and a student body president, Emily Fritze. Fritze, a political science senior, and the rest of ASUA work mostly under-appreciated jobs. You’ll only take notice of their names just before ASUA elections. But the organization represents student concerns to the state legislature, provides free legal service to students, organizes the annual Spring Fling carnival, has made campus sustainability a priority and is responsible for the recognition and support of nearly 500 clubs.

If you are still not convinced of the Wildcat’s lackey-mentality,  look no further than the author’s claim that ASUA officials work  ”mostly under-appreciated jobs.” WHAT? Then again, perhaps she’s right. Maybe we didn’t really appreciate Tommy Bruce for the sensitive, charismatic leader that he was. I mean, $1.4 million dollars isn’t that much, right? Thankfully, this is followed by a bit of unintentional humor. While it is absolutely true that you will only hear the names of your ASUA representatives prior to an election (unless, that is, you decide to check back here and read our junk every now and then), this is only because election season will see droves of candidates dancing on the mall with obnoxious signs. ASUA’s quick departure from the public psyche following the elections, however, is not a product of rampant under-appreciation; it’s just a reflection of the fact that ASUA is by and large irrelevant to the student body at large. Dismally low voter turnout makes Burundi’s democracy seem quintessential; annual shenanigans perpetrated by the elections commission (led by the presidentially appointed elections commissioner) would be genuinely disconcerting if we had any reason to believe they were the product of anything but good, old-fashioned incomptence; and, of course, many of the services ASUA points to in order to validate its own existence are perfectly capable of existing on their own. To make it all worse, ASUA itself seems to hold an unshakeable conviction that their organization is absolutely essential and that, god forbid, it should disappear into an abyss of bureaucratic nothingness, UA would instantaneously transform into Thunderdome. One-time ASUA senator Tyler Quillin even went as far as to claim once upon a time that ASUA was “better than public opinion.” This was also unintentionally humorous as it simply confirms the suspicion that the ASUA senate has become little more than a rubber-stamp for the administration, and therefore has no problem totally ignoring the students it purportedly represents. To be fair, incoming President Emily Fritze has talked about “giving students a voice” when it comes to fees, though, given recent ASUA history, I wouldn’t dispel any skepticism just yet. Are you catching our drift, yet? If not, I’ll leave you with now Desert Lamp editor Connor Mendenhall’s seminal Daily Wildcat column on why ASUA should be abolished.

Arizona Board of Regents

You will most likely hear the words “board of regents” after a couple choice expletives during a discussion about tuition increases. But ABOR, the governing body of Arizona’s public university system, plays a role in forming policy on tuition and fees, financial aid, legal affairs, strategic plans and academic and student affairs. The board is comprised of 12 members, including the governor, the superintendent of public instruction and two students.

The AZ BOR, or the guardian council, as they have come to be known, are the final authority when it comes to matters of tuition and fees. Nevertheless, the pyramid of blame does not end with them. As we recently found out, all of the guilty parties from ASUA upwards are more than happy to just bash the legislature when things don’t go their way. Be sure of one thing, though, freshmen. When you sit down in your one-thousand person INDV class on the first morning of the semester, the blame lies first and foremost with the regents. ABOR has essentially mandated that all three state universities increase the number of students they admit (via their “2020 vision”) because they are under the impression that if universities award more degrees, per capita income in the state of Arizona will magically go up. “BUT WE HAVE CHARTS TO PROVE IT,” they scream. Perhaps, but whoever made them clearly has no idea what the hell is going on.