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Head soccer coach named Former By Vincent Balistreri ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Lisa Oyen
Lisa Oyen has been named the new head soccer coach just four days after the Arizona soccer team’s final game of the season, Arizona Athletic Director Jim Livengood announced. “I’m very thankful to be given this opportunity,”Oyen said Thursday through a statement on the team’s Web site. “I’m very optimistic about the future of the program.” Oyen is the fourth head coach in the program’s history. She succeeds former head coach Dan Tobias. Tobias resigned on Oct. 12 due to personal
reasons, five days after former player Leila Amini said the program had been deteriorating over the last few years. Oyen will attempt to bring success to a program from which the previous three head coaches have resigned. Oyen was an assistant under Tobias for eight years at UA (2002-2009) and two at Washington State (2001-2002). Oyen played collegiate soccer at Montana, where she was a starting midfielder. She also played for two years with the Miami Gliders of the United Soccer League Southeastern Division. Players were told to meet at McKale Center for a team meeting at 5 p.m. on
Thursday evening, and were surprised with the news that the head coaching decision had already been made. “No one really knew what to expect because we’d been through a long season. We were surprised but, at the same time, excited,”said redshirt junior Alex Davis.“It’ll be good for the program because it’ll be a smooth transition since they already know us. “I had no idea that they would make the decision this week,” she added.“We thought that maybe it would be a couple weeks.” According to Davis, Oyen’s fellow co-interim head coach from the second half of the year, John Galas, will return as her assistant.
Iranian prisoner speaks By Marissa Freireich ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Lisa Beth Earle/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, along with veteran Matt Randle and President Robert Shelton, spoke at the Veterans Education and Transition Services office in the Student Union Memorial Center yesterday about a new bill Giffords introduced to the House of Representatives last week that would fix oversights to the Post-9/11 GI bill.
Rep. Giffords and Shelton praise VETS Office, Post-9/11 GI Bill By Will Ferguson ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and President Robert Shelton commended the studentrun Veterans Center at a press conference yesterday and spoke about a new bill Giffords introduced to the House of Representatives last week that would fix oversights to the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The Post-9/11 GI Bill went into effect in August and provides millions of veterans the opportunity to go back to school, Giffords said at the conference, hosted outside the Veterans Education and Transition Services office in the Student Union Memorial Center.
However, Giffords said there are some problems with the bill she intends to fix through her new legislation. Her new bill will address three key areas of the previous legislation. First, those veterans who retired before Aug. 1 of this year or were medically retired for a service disability will be able to transfer their benefits to a family member, said Giffords. Second, the bill will allow veterans who are pursuing an online education to receive the same housing allowance rates for their home as those veterans who are pursuing an education at a traditional institution, she said. Third, the bill expands eligibility to
combine previously earned education benefits with the benefits provided by the Post-9/11 GI Bill. For UA student veterans, Giffords’ new bill would provide much-needed financial breathing room in economically-challenging times. Matt Randle, student director for the VETS Office and a family studies and human development junior, stressed how financially difficult it is for veterans to make the transition from the armed services back to the classroom. “Fire fights and insurgents were replaced with mounting bills and bureaucracy,”Randle said. While working with fellow veterans,
Randle learned about the new GI bill that allowed him to start thinking about returning to school. “The new GI bill is wonderful,”he said. “However, with any legislative undertaking this large, there are areas of concern that need to be addressed,”he said. Randle said Giffords’ new legislative fix could be the answer to his problems with the Post-9/11 GI Bill. “Personally, Congresswoman Giffords’ bill will allow me to combine both my Montgomery GI Bill remaining benefits with the new Post-9/11 benefits so that I can complete my education without
Haleh Esfandiari spoke about her book, “My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran,” last night in the Harvill auditorium as part of the Persian Lecture Series. Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. From May 8 to August 21, 2007 — 105 days — she was detained in solitary confinement in Evin, an Iranian prison. “In everybody’s life, there are certain dates that you always remember,”Esfandiari said. Usually these dates are birthdays, anniversaries and other milestones, she added. But Esfandiari will always remember the dates on which she struggled with the Iranian government. On Dec. 30, 2006, Esfandiari was robbed on her way to the airport after visiting her 93 year-old mother in Tehran. When she went to the passport office, she was instructed to speak with the Office of the President, which she understood to be the Intelligence Ministry. “I knew something was not right,” she said.“It had a sobering affect on me.” She went to the Intelligence Ministry every day for four months to be interrogated. The Iranian officials believed her research center and others were instruments of the U.S. government. “They were very suspicious of the nature of our work,”she said.“It was intimidating, it was threatening, it was frightening.” She said every day she went for interrogation, she was uncertain she would go home. “They kept on talking about the puzzle, and I was supposed to fill in the missing pieces of that puzzle, which would then tell them the way the United States was going to do a regime change in Iran,”she said. On May 8, 2007 when she went to the Intelligence Ministry, the officials had a warrant for her arrest. Her cell at Evin prison in Iran contained one blanket, a copy of the Quran, two high windows and a mosquito net. “I decided that this was going to be my home for God knows how long,”she said. During her time in prison she was forced to face the wall during her continuous interrogation. After the interrogations, Esfandiari said she repeated her answers in her mind so she would not have any inconsistencies. “Being completely cut off from the world, that was the worst thing,”she said.“Solitary confinement is not physical torture, but it is
GIFFORDS, page 6
SPEAKER, page 6
Greeks gear-up for CATwalk By Michelle Monroe ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Wildcats will be on the prowl during the ninth annual CATwalk tomorrow. All monies raised for CATwalk, a fundraiser for women’s cancer research, are donated to the Bobbi Olsen Endowment at the Arizona Cancer Center. Bobbi Olsen, former head coach Lute Olsen’s wife, died Jan. 1, 2001 after a two-and-a-half-year battle with ovarian cancer. “When Bobbi Olsen passed away the fraternity and sorority community wanted to do something to honor Bobbi and to show support for Lute, his family and the whole Tucson community since she
IF YOU WANT TO WALK
Today: 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. Pre-registration and race packet pick up. UofA Bookstore, Student Union Memorial Center Saturday, November 14: 8:30 a.m. Registration and packet pick up UofA Bookstore, Student Union Memorial Center Cost: $25 per person to register
for more information visit catwalk.arizona.edu
was a mother figure for the team and very prominent within the Tucson community,” said Johanne Jenson, director of Fraternity and Sorority Programs.“They decided to do a walk in her honor and it started with a small walk around the Mall and it’s turned into much more.” While no longer a mandatory event, fraternities and sororities will be largely in attendance. “We did do an incentive this year,”Jenson said. “The fraternity or sorority with the most people registered gets a full page in our publication.” Each chapter gets a quarter of a page, but the winner will get more space to “feature more information about the chapter and include more photographs of members or the house or whatever the want,” Jenson said. There are currently 3,068 people registered for the walk. Kappa Kappa Gamma has 208 people registered, more than any other greek organization. They have also raised the most money, $6,200 in total, including a donation of $1,000. Delta Gamma follows closely with 199
people registered, and has made it a sisterhood event for the sorority. “We think the walk is a really important event, and a feel-good opportunity for everyone in Greek Life to show people the positive side of Greek Life,”said Mary Catalini, president of Delta Gamma. Delta Gamma has planned several other events to add to the day. “We have a program within Delta Gamma, it’s called Stable Connections, and so we have a representative from our national organization speaking and connecting the event we’re participating on campus to the values and ideals we have as Delta Gammas,”Catalini said. All the greek organizations on campus feel a special connection to the walk and a duty to volunteer. “We actually like to give back to the U of A community and every Monday in chapter we discuss stuff like this and they (the members) just love to volunteer,” said Conner Wielgus, Pi Kappa Phi’s social chair.“And we definitely feel a strong connection to the cause and enjoy taking part in the walk.” Of the fraternities, Pi Kappa Phi has
Last year’s CATwalk, held on Nov. 17, 2008, included over 3,200 participants who helped raise $108,000 for the Bobbi Olson Fund at the Arizona Cancer Center. CATwalk organizers hope to raise $500,000 by CATwalk 2010. Photo courtesy of Student Union Media
registered the second largest amount of people, with 100 out of the 117 members of the house registered. UA athletes are also represented in the walk. UA men’s and women’s track and field team will be walking again this year. “We try to find as many things to do in the community but this one is a little more special for us,” Harvey said. “It’s a great cause and any time any of our athletes, or our department, can be involved with something it’s definitely a great thing.”
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UA head coach Fred Harvey suspects the team will have 20 to 40 people walking on Saturday. Jenson said that while there aren’t many athletic teams registered for the event they often “show up and support the walk in different ways.” Even Wilbur and Wilma will be in attendance during the kids walk at 12:45 p.m. In the past three years, CATwalk has raised a total of $350,000. Their goal is to raise half a million by CATwalk 2010, Jensen said.
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