(Editor’s note: Though I just started cross-posting my writing elsewhere here, the following piece not only relies heavily on the research and ethos of this site, but also serves as a simple argument for why the discussions housed here are important. It’s directed at high school students, but if you care about being an aware member of any campus community, it’s relevant to you, too. A longer version was originally published by Prefessional U as part of their Student Journalism ...

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During his State of the Union Address, President Obama strongly urged every state not to allow students to drop out of high school before the age of 18. The president alleges that because Americans with higher levels of education have a lower unemployment rate, requiring students to stay in school will offer a cure to high levels of unemployment.

This is a neat thesis by the President’s administration, but the equation is not nearly so concise. Even if students are required by law to stay in s...

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As they have publicized nowhere, the ASUA Senate will vote today on a resolution condemning bills in the Arizona legislature that will disallow private citizens from exercising their right to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. This is a long and storied sage with ASUA — read this site’s reports on the matter from 2009, 2010, and 2011, just as a selection.

The resolution (here as a pdf with today’s meeting agenda) is hardly different than resolutions other ASUA Senates...

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As was announced yesterday afternoon, the Arizona Board of Regents has presented what they’re calling a presidential “candidate” for the position vacated by Robert Shelton last July. In a very different process than how the past few presidents have been selected, the Board announced Ann Weaver Hart, current president of Temple University, as their first choice for UA President. According to the press release, “Hart will visit the UA campus on Feb. 13 to meet with students...

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For the fourth time here in the Lamp‘s long memory, it’s ASUA Election season. The (controversial) Elections Commission sent out the names of the candidates[pdf] to the press last night.  The candidates are:

President:

Katy Murray

Chad Travis

Leo Yamaguchi

Executive Vice-President:

Kevin Elliot

Krystina Nguyen

JW Phillips

 Administrative Vice-President

Dani Dobrusin

Paige Sager

Ryan Weaver

 Senate:

Taylor Ashton

Jake Barman

Logan Bilby

Alex Chang

Genesis Chapa

Justin Evans

Bryc...

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An item you could pay for with your Kavanagh fee

For all the ado that’s been status-ed, tweeted, and publicly palavered over the proposed “Kavanaugh fee” in the last few days, an important detail is overlooked: HB 2675 does not once propose to increase tuition by one single penny, as even the Wildcat concedes in passing:

So what would actually happen? Ignore for now the “5-percenters” with full academi...

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A lunch free of charge means a lunch free of cost, right?

Here are a couple breaking news items for your Monday: The state of Arizona is broke. College is expensive. If you keep making an investment that doesn’t yield a solid return on that investment, you should probably reconsider whether it’s a good investment.

Alarming everyone with a Facebook this weekend was an article from the East Valley Tribune bearing the headline, “HB 2675 may up college costs by $2K for many in Ariz...

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Under a new proposal, this is how much psychology majors would pay for tuition

The idea of graduating college with no student loans probably sounds great for students who sacrifice sleep, nutrition, and drinking beer better than Keystone to make loan payments each month for much of their young lives. These crushing loans seem especially unfair to students whose investment in college don’t yield as comfortable salary returns as they may have hoped.

Students at The University of California-R...

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The unexpected derailing—if not total defeat—of the Senate’s horrendous anti-piracy bill and its counterpart in the House is a genuinely encouraging moment, made possible only by a tremendous public outcry against the bill of the sort we have not seen in years. Rarely is the citizenry so united on a single issue, and rarely is the gulf between the interests of the majority of citizens and the interests of the party oligarchs made so brilliantly clear.

That gulf was clearest in the app...

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Everyone who lives on campus signs a pile of papers that restrict everything from candles to pets to “fire-like conditions” (does that include opening the window in August?). But how much of these restrictions serve to foster the community, as ResLife claims, and how many of them are manipulated to violate the basic rights of students, such as rights to property and rights to due process?

In solid reporting by the Wildcat, we get yet another glimpse into the sinister process by which...

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– Are universities vital to a city? This article includes a quote from ASU President Michael Crow who doesn’t think so, but it’s worth noting that Tempe and vast squirming ordinariness that surrounds it are the opposite of a college town. If, as Crow argues, universities will serve to bolster the rise of conglomerate cities like Phoenix to be known as “megapolitan” areas, it’s a decent argument for getting rid of them.

– UA News reports that “More ...

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Does being an economics students make you a grinch, or are those inclined to the field born wicked? In a column by a researcher from the University of Washington, the New York Times editorial page tackles this eternal question and concludes the latter. The basis for this conclusion is executed with the grace and sound rhetoric we’ve come to expect from mainstream political commentary:

The stereotypes about economists are well known: that we’re selfish Grinches; that we don’t read human...

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Is this hat in the UA president ring?

When rising education costs make even instant noodles seem like a splurge, students might assume higher education leaders are trying every innovation to keep quality high and college expense low. But unconventional ideas aren’t always rewarded: University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere was fired in late November for, in part, his ideas about how to slow tuition increases without sacrificing the quality of his university. In the UA’s own se...

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Today in backwards progress, the Obama administration has issued a guidance asserting the importance of affirmative action in education, including college admissions decisions. The guidance is a reversal in White House policy from a 2008 letter issued by President Bush that called admissions decisions based on race “highly suspect” and noted numerous limitations to race-based opportunity rulings.

Affirmative action, like most discussions related to race, has a long and sordid history...

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Do UA students deserve another elections cycle of undisclosed rules, violations doled out at the whim of the Elections Commissioner, repeated re-hashings of what rules means in the ASUA Supreme Court? Should presenting a free, fair election for student representatives include over-broad clauses that allow the Elections Commissioner undefined, unchecked power? The 2012 Elections Commission seems to think so — the few changes made to the first released draft of the 2012 Elections Code after ...

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After offering initial thoughts last week regarding ASUA’s currently-in-draft 2012 Elections Code, here are more in-depth thoughts regarding the still-plagued document. In the words of former ASUA Supreme Court member Brian Chase on last week’s post:

“The Code has problems…ASUA needs to read the Supreme Court decisions and consider those rulings when changing the code. They should also go back and look at the reporting of this site and the Wildcat (assuming their archives...

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Well, it’s moving day, and time to say sayonara to these wordpress.com haunts. The new site is at the old URL – desertlamp.com. We’ll keep this site open for another week or so as we move over, but all the new content will be available there.

Agenda available here [PDF].

1. Consent Agenda. The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) got $864.95 for a benefit concert – $700 for audio/visual equipment, and $164.95 for “police security.”

More importantly for the author, the consent agenda also included a petition from a Young Americans for Liberty chapter. Unfortunately, they missed the meeting, and had their hearing for start-up funds tabled until they show up. It’s great to see that there’s a nascent ...

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We might not be able to get the names of the Porkies (we’ll have to find other means for better quantifying the “friend endowment” effect), but thanks to the work of Board Chair Matthew Totlis, there’s plenty of information on how your Student Services Fee is serving you!

The twenty documents that follow below are divided into three parts. Most of them pertain to program alteration requests (PARs – welcome to Bureaucracy). These are submitted by fee-receiving divisi...

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The Internet-People declare: All your Paper are belong to us! Ben Kalafut had a piece on Proposition 400 in yesterday’s paper (and if you’re a Tucson voter, take the time to read his excellent breakdowns of the other propositions – 200, 401, and 402); today, Laura was kind enough to find a spot for our tilting at the windmills of Legal Age 21.

Writing the piece also served as a reminder of one of the benefits of blog format – no word limits! Sure, this allows for a lot of...

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