By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Reporter

The UAF Art Department hosted a ceramics sale fundraiser last week for a memorial scholarship that will benefit art students. The scholarship is in memory of Tom Rohr, who died last summer in Eugene, OR of a heart attack at 45.

“Tom was very much about sharing what he did … and he would want that to continue,” said Teresa Shannon, a former student of Rohr’s who is organizing the fund with Karen Foote.

More than 100 pieces of ceramic artwork decorated the UAF Art Gallery for the auction on May 28. About 50 national and local potters and students created pots, purses, baskets, and jars for the fundraiser. Some artists also volunteered at the event.

Dorothy Nash takes in the new exhibit at the Museum of the North titled "Then and Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape." Photo by Jesse Hoff/The Sun Star

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Reporter

The UA Museum of the North, along with two guest curators, drew from society and ecology to provide a new look into the Arctic in the special exhibit “Then & Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape.” The exhibit opened May 15, and will run until Jan. 8, 2011.

Visitors to the exhibit are greeted with a text panel: “For several thousand years, the landscape has offered vistas of tundra punctuated by dramatic mountains and glaciers. Now, the Arctic is changing.”

By Andrew Sheeler
Sun Star Reporter

Outgoing University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton may be going out with a bang after proposing a much larger tuition increase to the Board of Regents than initially expected. The ASUAF student government has roundly condemned the proposed increase, but university officials say the increases are necessary and not unreasonable.

ASUAF elections are Wednesday and Thursday. Polls will be open in a variety of locations, including the Wood Center. Here’s a brief look at each of the candidates.

President/Vice President

My name is Arthur Martin and I’m running for ASUAF president along with Sara Cunningham as vice president on the platform of an active, open, and accountable government. I have been a senator for the last three years. I have been an Internal Affairs Committee chairman and am currently an Executive Committee chairman and a parliamentarian for the ASUAF senate. I feel that if the students on campus pay a fee to an organization, they should know what that organization is doing and where that money is going.

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Reporter

Four sustainability activists came together on Thursday at Schaible Auditorium to discuss eco-friendly initiatives and how student groups can move beyond local organization into statewide movements that can implement change.

As part of the Earth Day and Springfest weekend activities, Amy Snider, president of Pi Sigma Alpha invited Tomasso Boggia, an advocacy associate from the Center for American Progress and Evon Peter from the Indigenous Leadership Institute to join UAF’s Robert Holden and Kevin Mair from UAS for the panel discussion. Jessie Peterson from the Northern Alaska Environmental Center moderated the event. The panelists focused on the pathways to implement change.

By Molly Dischner
Sun Star Reporter

After months spent discussing how to handle invasive plants on campus, UAF’s weed team has a draft work plan and is hosting a public meeting this week to get input on it. Organizer Marie Heidemann, a graduate student in Natural Resources Management, said the team will have a draft of its plan available at its meeting on Wednesday. The meeting will start at 6 p.m. in Room 102 at U-Park.

The plan includes a variety of management strategies, including ignoring some species, studying others and eradicating still others. Heidemann said that the biology of each plant was considered in deciding how to manage it.

By Reba Lean
Sun Star Reporter

In the last three years, the UAF women’s basketball team has seen three different coaches come and go. After losing Darryl Smith in Spring 2008, the athletic department hired Dave Thompson as an interim head coach. Thompson came from the local Hutchison High School where he coached the boys’ basketball team for five years. Now, UAF has narrowed down two candidates for a permanent head-coaching job with experiences and backgrounds that are polar opposites.

By Molly Dischner
Sun Star Editor-in-Chief

Fees are a two-sided issue. As a way to itemize each term’s bill, they’re sort of handy. A quick glance at UAOnline makes it easy to find out how much of a semester’s bill goes toward transportation, and how much is for student life and the health center and departmental fees.

Reading through my account for this semester, I am paying nine fees. Four more charges are fees by another name (Mandatory Health Ctr/Semester, UA Network Charge-2, and so on). Some, such as a lab charge, I am choosing to pay because I’m taking an elective class. Others, including the Student Life fee, are absolutely mandatory. To a certain extent, I think that our Fun Star story about the Board of Regents eliminating tuition and replacing it with a tuition fee is not as far-fetched as the rest of the Fun Star was.

I don’t object to paying for many of those services. I understand that labs are more expensive than lectures and I’m glad that seven percent of my student government fee funds the student newspaper. But instituting new fees is not an appropriate way to lift a department out of a budget deficit or circumvent inadequate legislative funding.

Compiled by Mark Evans
Sun Star Reporter

Persons mentioned in this blotter are innocent until proven guilty.

Friday, April 16, 3:45 p.m.
Someone called to report the theft of approximately $1000 worth of used copper wire that was stored in the fenced area at ski boot hill. An officer responding to the location photographed shoe prints and tire tracks found in the area.