DW WILDLIFE
A TUCSON TURKEY DAY
Where to take the folks and what to do with those pesky leftovers. PAGE B3
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Gobble gobble wednesday, november ,
tucson, arizona
dailywildcat.com
Program helps balance sports, school By Adam Lehrer ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Commitment to Athletes’ Total Success, or C.A.T.S, consistently tries to raise standards for academics among athletes through offering tutoring and advising that better allows athletes to manage their schedules. In March of this year, the Arizona Daily Wildcat reported that graduation rates of UA athletes ranked fourth-worst among schools that advanced to the 2009 NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The study, conducted by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, considered whether freshmen who started school between 1998-99 and 2001-02
earned diplomas within six years. Currently however, academics among athletes seem to be improving. C.A.T.S. has instituted a number of programs to help improve academics among athletes for the future. “Our mission is to ensure that student athletes handle the transition from high school to college and that this transition is as smooth as possible,” said Mike Meade, director of C.A.T.S. Academic Services. “We wish to provide athletes the tools and resources needed given the taxing time demands split between academics and sport.” C.A.T.S. no longer reports to the UA’s athletic department. Instead, C.A.T.S. reports to the Division of Student Affairs. Meade says this allows for more
academic support on campus outside the athletics department and maintains communication between the athletic and academic sides of the university. The reports of low graduation among athletes were for students who are“long gone” from the school, and since then, the academics among athletes have improved, according to Meade. A new measurement for athletes’ academic success has become available since those reports came out, the Academic Progress Rate. The report, instituted in 2005, measures teams based on athletes’ academic progression from semester to semester, retention of athletes within a given program and the graduation rate after five years, according to Meade. “It’s a better indication of how
athletes are doing,” he said. Collegiate teams that fail to achieve a score of at least 925, or a 50 percent graduation rate, can be penalized, according to National Collegiate Athletic Association. A perfect score is 1000. The UA men’s cross country team posted a perfect score of 1000 in the report posted on May 1 of this year, earning them the Public Recognition Award. However, men’s football received a score of 924 in the same report, one point shy of what was needed to pass. Meade is optimistic for the coming report in May 2010.“We’re looking healthy in the classroom,”he said. C.A.T.S. utilizes methods to maintain academic success among athletes. It monitors the academic progress among athletes on a
regular basis, and professors of athletes are required to give updates on student athletes at least twice during a semester. “C.A.T.S. is a huge help,”said women’s soccer player and physical education junior Alex Davis.“For freshmen and sophomores, there is planned and scheduled study hall and it really helps you prioritize when you get to college. The advisors are awesome, and we get both educational and sports advisors, and it’s good to get opinions from both.” Meade also praised the advantages of C.A.T.S. “Student athletes are held to higher standards and require close attention,” said Meade, “So if a student dips (in ATHLETES, page A3
UA vanguard in border studies Police
brutality mars UC protests By Michelle Monroe ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Photo courtesy of Dr. Patti Ota/Eller College - MIS
Laws for crossing this fence, which runs along the U.S./Mexico border, have become more strict with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, passed on June 1. The initiative placed limits on types of identification accepted for legal border crossing.
New Homeland Security regulations transforming immigration dialogue By Jennifer Koehmstedt ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Photo courtesy of Christopher B.R. Diller/BORDERS Center
Kevin Moffitt, a fourth-year doctoral student from the UA’s BORDERS Center, sits for a demonstration of the pupillometry equipment being evaluated in the center’s recent experimental data collections. The camera uses an infrared light source to capture information about a subject’s pupil dilation patterns and gaze activity, which may provide cues for the accurate detection of deceptive behavior in interview situations.
The new travel document requirements at border ports of entry mark one of many new initiatives by the Department of Homeland Security to secure the U.S./ Mexico border. The Western HemisphereTravel Initiative went into effect June 1, 2009, as a part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requires that U.S. citizens have a passport, passport card, enhanced driver’s license or other approved forms of identification when crossing the border. Limiting the number of documents accepted at the ports of entries has helped identify the use of false documents and forms of identification to enter the United
States, said Bonnie Arellano, acting chief of Public Affairs for the Customs and Border Patrol Office of Field Operations. “When you think about the fact that if you have 8,888 different types of documents or more coming into this country previous to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, that’s a huge help on our part,” she said.“The Nogales port of entry in 2006 was number four in the country for document fraud.” Decreasing the number of documents has increased law enforcement activity at the ports of entry, Arellano said. “We do more prosecutions now than we did before,”she said. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative is just one of the measures that
Protests and police brutality occurred across several campuses after the University of California Board of Regents increased student fees 32 percent for all students last Thursday. The University of California system is facing a budget shortfall of $1.2 billion dollars from the state, and officials hope the fee increases will generate $505 million. The Regents met at the University of California, Los Angeles for two days. The second day they moved into a windowless room away from the public because of protesting interruptions the previous day. Police in full riot gear surrounded the building. “Well before the leaders passed it we had the three-day strike,” said Katherine Cross, an environmental economy and policy sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley. “There were a bunch of speakers every single day.” The Associated Students of the University of California, San Diego organized a sleep-in, where students gathered at the school the night of Wednesday, Nov. 18 and were bused to UCLA the following day to “be in the company of thousands of … fellow UC students (to) take a stand against the fee hikes!”according to a Facebook advertisement for the event. Once the fee increase was approved, campuses took action. “Wednesday, Thursday and Friday there were protests on campus, like they went into the library clamoring on the doors and windows,” said Rima Kalush, a political science junior at the University of California, Davis. “I didn’t go to class Thursday as part of the walk out; that was the extent of my participation.” Even campuses that aren’t known for being politically active stood up and took part. “We’re not like Berkeley crazy,” said
BORDER, page A3
PROTEST, page A3
Study abroad on the rise By Alexandra Newman ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Despite the slumping economy, the UA’s study abroad program is sending about 2,200 students abroad this year. Kirk Simmons, executive director of International Affairs, said he found that students are taking advantage of financial aid and making study abroad a priority. “I’ve been surprised at the robust enrollment in our program given the fact that we are a public university and that we have a majority of our students on financial aid,” Simmons said.
Study abroad at the UA consists of 150 programs in 50 countries led by 170 of the UA’s own faculty members, and is ranked among the top 20 programs in the nation. There are two different methods of studying abroad available to students at the UA. Students can choose to participate in a one-way study abroad, and the university hosts exchanges between nondegree seeking students. This means that a student from another country swaps places with a UA student and each pays their home school’s tuition. “Studying abroad is a time of self-discovery,”Spanish and geography senior Louise
Campoy said. “When you’re taken out of your comfort zone, you have two choices: remain secluded and withdrawn, or adapt. If you choose the latter, you learn so many things about yourself and life in general.” Student demand for study abroad varies greatly, according to Simmons. Traditionally, English-speaking countries are the most popular places to study, along with western European countries, but this is changing as the demand for programs in countries in Asia and Africa increases. “Students are much more sophisticated STUDY ABROAD, page A3
Timothy Galaz/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Vivian Rebeil, undecided sophomore, and Michelle Pecora, education sophomore, chat in the waiting room of the Office of Study Abroad & Student Exchange at 939 N. Tyndall Ave. Both students are interested in studying in Italy.
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