Editorial&Opinion
The Cardinal issue: football over students STAFF EDITORIAL
It seems a three-year deal was not enticing enough to keep the Arizona Cardinals in Flagstaff for their training camp this summer, and as NAU inches forward with contingency plans, they should keep a more important deal on their minds — the one with students. Although the Cardinals provided an economic boon to Flagstaff and NAU for the past 25 years, the “extraordinary” bid NAU president John Haeger offered was not enough to keep the red birds roosted at altitude. While fans await an official announcement, the new summer home of the losingest team in the NFC West (with a 5–11 record in 2012) will likely be in the boiling furnace of the Glendale — because charred poultry is best. The team brings an infusion of visitors to the city, but it is tourist season anyway. When the Cardinals were forced to temporarily move their summer training camp to Prescott in 2005 due to a virus outbreak at NAU, tourist-related sales remained steady with 2004 levels and did not drastically increase in 2006 with the return of the red birds. NAU has catered to the Cardinals and the City of Flagstaff long enough. The university already moved back the fall semester schedule to start on a Wednesday, with commencement also on a Wednesday. Finals schedule will also have to be adjusted if the schedule remains. If the cards fall into place and the team signs a 15-year deal as speculated with Glendale, the NAU and the City of Flagstaff will search for alternative uses of the university’s facilities, but instead of allowing the city to coerce them into branding themselves as an athletics-based institution, NAU needs to recognize the needs of their student population and invest in pursuits with a tangible impact. Haeger said if the Cardinals confirm the move down south, NAU will “immediately begin planning other uses for our facilities that assure both revenue for the community and support for our academic mission.” The school’s academic mission should not be an ancillary mention: it should be the central dogma of an institution of higher education. The campus should not take responsibility for stimulating Flagstaff’s economy. While the partnership between the Flagstaff City Council and the NAU administration is important, the relationship between students and their academic institution should carry more weight than local concerns. If the Cardinals decide to continue their summer migrations and keep their training camp in Flagstaff, NAU needs to evaluate this relationship — is it really worth it to keep a philandering team at the expense of students, even if it benefits the community in other ways? This scenario is unlikely, and the Cardinals will probably end up in Glendale, in the heart of their fan base. Having the team in Flagstaff has been more of a promotion tool for the “Summer Home of the Arizona Cardinals” than an asset to the university’s academic goals. Instead of marketing to athletic franchises and teams, the university should use the resources previously dedicated to the Cardinals to benefit the student population through improving its standing as a regional leader in disciplines such as forestry, environmental science and hotel restaurant management. Investing in such programs directly benefits students’ undergraduate experience instead of them just being able to brag they walked past a field on their campus that hosted an over-done quarterback position battle. Editor’s note: Copy Chief Maddie Friend wrote this editorial on behalf of the staff.
Political Cartoon by Brian Regan
Woodward controversy reveals media’s circus act
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tep right up, folks, the circus is in town! That’s right, the American media is back with a brand-new performance, sure to be an instant classic! After all, we all know by now the media has neither the ability nor the inclination to keep us informed; that’s not their job anymore. Their job is to keep us entertained, and they never disappoint. You know those performances that start out really boring? Well, this one started with the sequester. Boring accomplished. I would explain what the sequester is, but there’s a finite amount of caffeine in the world; if you don’t know, Google it. Anyway, Bob Woodward, one of the most famous living reporters, wrote an opinion piece about the sequester for The Washington Post, saying the sequester was conceived MILES SCHNEIDERMAN of and put into action by the Obama administration, and that Obama is now trying to change the deal he originally made. He’s mostly right, but that’s not what’s imporant. The following week, in an interview with Politico, Woodward claimed a senior White House official threatened him via email after the piece was published. Was the White House really intimidating journalists? Well, no. It didn’t take long for the truth to come out: the email in question was innocuous, no threat was made and Woodward responded to the email in a friendly manner, but that’s not what’s important, either. Woodward is best known for being one of the two men who uncovered the Watergate scandal and precipitated the downfall of President Richard Nixon. He’s a legend in investigative reporting; Robert Redford played him in a movie. Since then, Woodward has taken heat from the journalism community for his apparently unquestioning compliance with the second Bush administration and his involvement in the Valerie Plame affair. These days, the general consensus seems to be Woodward is a meticulous, accurate reporter
who doesn’t do a whole lot of critical thinking; he has access to all the right people, and he believes what they tell him. That’s not the important thing. The important thing is the media’s reaction to this controversy, on both sides of the partisan divide. It’s hilarious. After Woodward claimed he’d been threatened by the White House, the nation’s political right, who traditionally despise the liberal media and everyone associated with it, came rushing to Woodward’s defense, their hatred of the press set aside temporarily in favor of their undiluted loathing for the president. Meanwhile, over on the left, Woodward became an overnight pariah, because he had dared to blame the sequester on Obama. Everyone knows it was the Republicans’ fault, they whined. How dare this reporter criticize the President of All Things Just and Wise? A columnist on The Daily Kos, a supposedly progressive website that didn’t have a single bad word to say about Obama through the entire 2012 election cycle, wrote: “Now with recent events, I’m forced to wonder if maybe Carl Bernstein had been the brains of [Watergate], and Woodward just some random hack on the paper who had been assigned to work with him.” How vicious is that? When the left turns on you, they really turn on you, and the response, via Twitter, of infamously stupid and/or insane Fox News pundit Dana Perino illustrates the turn. “Somewhere in Moscow tonight, Vladimir Putin saw that Bob Woodward was sent a threatening message from the White House . . . and he smiled.” Wow. It’s a good thing the Cold War hasn’t ended yet, or Perino would sound like Joe McCarthy after a lobotomy. This isn’t the news anymore, folks. It’s a three-ring circus. I’d like to say the performance is one night only, but we’re not that lucky. It’s all day, every day, for the rest of our lives. Welcome to the American media. Enjoy the show.
Mar. 14, 2013 - Mar. 27, 2013 | The Lumberjack 11