The Arizona Regents Bow To A Cabal Of Developers, Real Estate Sleazeballs And Corporate Kingpins. By Margaret Regan THE BUSINESS OF Arizona International Campus is business. If you think that AIC is in the business of offering an independent liberal-arts education to young Pima County residents, you weren't at the Arizona Board of Regents meeting last Friday. There the college's proponents carefully explained its purpose is to train young Arizonans, at public expense, to be loyal employees of for-profit corporations. Before the Regents voted, 6 to 2, to put the new college within the UA Science and Technology Park, Robert Walkup, a Hughes Missile executive and chair of the Greater Tucson Economic Council, cheerfully explained to them the needs of corporations: "In the increasing competition of a high-tech world...you have got to teach people the tools of manufacturing," Walkup said. "The key today, in companies like Hughes, Motorola and so on, the key is the integration of education. What works is the involvement of higher education. The establishment of a university at Rita Road, side by side with a high-tech industry, is very visionary...We will have design, manufacturing and education integrated into a single unit." The research park already houses a division of Walkup's company, Hughes Missile, along with several other companies including Microsoft and IBM, where boosters expect students to get internships. But if you think the student cogs in this industrial "unit" of Walkup's vision are likely to be exposed in the classroom to critiques of this cozy arrangement, you're an idealist. Because at the same meeting the Board of Regents voted, this time unanimously, to hire all AIC professors on "term contracts," blithely eliminating tenure, the mechanism designed to protect academic freedom. And if you think the college boosters care that the students making the long drive out to I-10 and Rita Road will be contributing to Tucson's traffic snarls, smog and sprawl, you're a bleeding heart. Because the college, set in open desert ripe for blading, will be the goose laying golden eggs for real estate speculators and developers of all stripes, including Don Diamond, who's long been pushing for his far-eastside Rocking K Ranch. (Diamond wasn't at the meeting, but he sits on an AIC board.) Attorney Donald Pitt, the former regent, and Diamond friend who masterminded the University of Arizona's acquisition of the former IBM park, even delivered a short paean to life on the road. Asserting, incorrectly, that AIC will be less than 20 minutes from the UA, Pitt mused, "What's important is not the distance but the time traveled." And if you thought concerns about conflict of interest would keep Regent Hank Amos Jr., of Tucson Realty and Trust, from voting on the location, you're naive. He's been lobbying for the eastside site all along. He didn't bother to conceal his glee over the new location of the college. "I have experience in the residential and commercial field," he enthusiastically told the assemblage. "...That area is one of the hottest areas as far as growth." Bruce Wright, the UA's director of economic development, dutifully underscored Amos' point by putting up a slide chart to show us all just how housing starts have been skyrocketing in the Vail School District, which contains the college. Wright apparently prefers new houses to old. He's the one who recently led the charge to demolish three central-city homes on East Sixth Street to put up a UA parking lot. The embarrassing sight of Wright, a public employee, acting as errand boy to developers was just par for the course that day. In fact, the whole meeting was a fascinating dramatization of power and politics at play in the Old Pueblo. Business interests reigned supreme, and previous objectors fell into line. Pitt, who's resurfaced as head of the Campus Research Corporation that now runs the park (real-estate dean Roy Drachman is on the board) happily waved the about-face editorial he'd clipped from that morning's Arizona Daily Star. The Star, it seems, had caved. The editors, repudiating the fine reporting on AIC's woes by writer Alisa Wabnik and their own previous critical editorials, produced a chirpy bit of flack in praise of AIC. They advised the regents to vote forthwith both for the no-tenure provisions and the eastside location. Delighted by the editorial, Pitt went on to sing the praises of the forthcoming happy marriage of industry and education he foresees at AIC. The whole rosy mood of self-congratulation was marred only by Judy Gignac, regent from Sierra Vista. She took exception to the cozy industrial-educational complex envisioned by the troop of Tucson businessmen. "Rather than siting a liberal arts teaching facility in the midst of a research facility, I will vote a very strong no," she said angrily. (The other no vote came from student regent Mark Davis.) Gignac feared industry would push the curriculum toward design and engineering, she said, at the expense of the liberal arts disciplines. (The location theoretically is temporary, but, as Gignac sniffed, "It's like a temporary cat. I've never heard of a temporary cat.") Pitt argued back. "I hope that because you're starting out in an atmosphere of industry, where part-time jobs are available, this should still be an institution driven toward undergraduate education...It really lies with the (college) leaders to develop the programs." But there's the rub. If you think the college's leaders can withstand the pressures of powerful special interests, think again. At the meeting, UA President Manuel Pacheco, with a weak smile, announced that just in the last 30 days he'd come to realize the great advantages of putting the new college in the industrial park. With that recommendation to his bosses, he turned his back on his own community panel, who said in no uncertain terms the college should be in the middle of the city. He also repudiated the work of the professional planners to whom he paid $100,000 to take the decision out of the realm of politics. And Celestino Fernández, AIC provost, owes everything to the regents. After all, they went along with his irregular appointment to his job. Fernández was a UA administrator who'd been bouncing from one post to another for years. When time came to hire somebody to head the new school, which is starting out under the auspices of the UA, Pacheco did not form a search committee to seek and screen applicants. Instead, in violation of all university procedures, he simply gave Fernández the job and the regents confirmed his appointment. Fernández set to work immediately to give the regents exactly what they wanted: a plan for a school without tenure. And if you think Fernández, in the interests of fairness and consistency, will resign his own tenure in the UA sociology department, you're a dreamer. Once the school gets underway, how do you think Provost Fernández would deal with, say, an untenured AIC sociology professor who gives a newspaper interview criticizing Microsoft for hiring temporary workers without benefits? Or an urban planner who delivers a classroom lecture skewering developers like Diamond for creating the kind of sprawl that has destroyed downtowns all over the country? Or an education professor who denounces as corrupt the whole damn system under which political appointees and business interests mine the public universities for private gain? If you think Fernández will congratulate the profs for stimulating provocative new thinking among their students, you're a noodle. After all, at the meeting, as they enthusiastically moved to ban tenure at AIC, the regents did not ask Fernández a single question about safeguards he planned to institute to protect academic freedom. They never even raised the issue.

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