By Bailey Stoltzfus. Arizona State and the University of Arizona Are Joining the Big 12 in 2024 In August 2023, news broke that Arizona and Arizona State had applied and been accepted to join the Big 12 athletic conference. The Wildcats and Sun Devils are currently members of the Pac-12 conference, but it had been presumed that, if the two schools decided to leave the Pac-12, they would preserve the Territorial Cup rivalry and leave together. The move was the latest in a series of conference realignment moves that had begun in 2021 when Texas and Oklahoma announced their move from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The Arizona schools’ fellow Pac-12 members, USC and UCLA, decided to join the midwest-based Big Ten a year later, setting off…
Guest post by Professor Carl Tobias. President Joe Biden recently traveled to Arizona, Nevada, and Utah when touting his many efforts to protect the environment, curtail climate change, and preserve natural, cultural, and historical resources. For example, Biden designated one million acres near the Grand Canyon National Park as a National Monument. Deb Haaland, the initial Native American to serve in the Cabinet and the first indigenous person to be Secretary of the Interior, proclaimed that “Native American history is American history” and stated that the monument will provide tribal members a voice in managing lands on which Native Americans and their ancestors have long lived, farmed, and prayed. Another critically important effort that Biden has pledged to foster, and should continue promoting, is the nomination and confirmation of well-qualified, mainstream indigenous…
By Andrew Ford. NFL Player Files Suit Over NIL Deal In the new frontier of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) contracts for college and high school athletes, a complaint recently filed by Chicago Bears defensive tackle Gervon Dexter, Sr. confirmed what some NIL critics feared: manipulation and coercion of young athletes. Dexter, a second-round pick out of the University of Florida in the 2023 NFL Draft, signed an agreement with Big League Advance Fund on May 16, 2022. Under the agreement, Big League Advance Fund agreed to pay Dexter a one-time fee of $436,485 in 2022 in exchange for the rights to use his NIL during his college and professional career. More controversial, though, the agreement obligated Dexter to pay Big League Advance Fund 15% of Dexter’s pre-taxed NFL earnings for 25 years.…
By Bennett Houck. Phoenix, Arizona has been one of the foundational locations for Autonomous Vehicle (“AV”) testing since 2016. Fellow Phoenicians may remember that in March of 2018 an Uber AV struck and killed a pedestrian crossing Mill Avenue in Tempe, AZ. This incident was the first pedestrian death involving an AV. In this case, the AV (classified as Level 3) detected the pedestrian but failed to stop or notify the backup driver. Uber quickly reached a settlement with the pedestrian’s family and pulled more than ninety test AVs off the road in Arizona. But for Rafaela Vasquez, the backup driver in this incident, the issue didn’t resolve so quickly. On Tuesday, September 15, 2020, Vasquez was charged with negligent homicide. And on July 28, 2023, Vasquez pled guilty to…
By Samantha Fox. Expanded School Vouchers in Arizona School Choice has been a topic of debate among politicians, religious leaders, parents, and educators for decades. At the center of the debate are parents wishing to pull their children from the public education system to find a private institution better aligned with their values. Arizona implemented a School Choice voucher program in 2011, which was expanded in 2022, making it the most comprehensive—and expensive—in the country. In September 2022, every student became eligible for a voucher in the form of an Empowerment Savings Account (“ESA”) worth an average of $7,200 per year. While the original program applied to students who met certain criteria, the recent expansion set Arizona apart from other states by making a voucher available to every student regardless…
By Melissa Alter. The 50-50 Model Earlier this year, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne challenged the future of dual language programs in Arizona’s public school system. On June 19, Horne threatened to withhold funding from schools that use the 50-50 dual language model to teach English to students who lack proficiency in the language, known as English Language Learners. Under this model, schools teach English Language Learners in English for half the day and in their native language—typically Spanish—for the other half. The 50-50 model was one of four strategies approved by the Arizona State Board of Education to teach English Language Learners. Dual language programs are becoming increasingly prominent in Arizona schools; in the 2021-2022 school year, English Language Learners comprised approximately 8.5% of students in Arizona. Now,…
By Mackenzie Holden. The Phoenix Zoo’s Elephant Exhibit In 2022, an animal welfare organization, In Defense of Animals (IDA), added the Phoenix Zoo to its 2021 list of the worst zoos for elephants. IDA noted the small size of the elephant enclosure, the high temperatures of Phoenix summers, and inadequate access to water. In response, an official at the Phoenix Zoo, Heather Wright, asserted that the enclosure has ample access to water and that their elephant has access to three separate exhibits. But the criticisms did not end there: IDA also emphasized the complex cognitive abilities of elephants and how captivity is detrimental to their mental health—especially when they live alone. Currently, the Phoenix Zoo’s elephant enclosure comprises a single elephant, Indu. Indu has been the sole elephant at the…
By Caroline Anton. On March 17, 2023, Arizona Governor, Katie Hobbs, signed Executive Order 2023-09 banning race-based hair discrimination in all State agencies. Under the Executive Order, State agencies, as well as State contractors and subcontractors are prohibited from discriminating against job applicants and employees for the style in which they wear their hair. The Order covers children in public schools as well. History of Hair Discrimination Race-based hair discrimination has a long and deep-rooted history in the United States. Minstrel songs mocked the texture of Black hair, and New Orleans passed laws requiring Black women to cover their hair with scarves. By the end of the 19th Century, hair straightening combs were widely utilized “to tame black hair” into a white style. The 1960s saw a growing wave of…
By Rob Curl. In December 2022, Arizona’s Water Infrastructure and Finance Authority (WIFA) unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution in support of a seawater desalination project in Mexico. The proposed plant would be built by Israel-based company IDE Technologies near Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, where it would process saltwater from the Gulf of California and pipe as much as 300,000 acre-feet of potable freshwater to Arizona. WIFA’s resolution signals growing enthusiasm for desalination as an answer to Arizona’s water woes, but the project has been met with plenty of skepticism. Arizona’s Water Problem Proponents of desalination argue that Arizona’s water supply is dwindling and that this is already affecting the state’s development. Year by year, the drying climate in Western states leaves less water in the Colorado River to sustain Arizona communities.…
By Kirk Nguyen. The city of Phoenix has become a popular destination for domestic migrants. Unfortunately, Phoenix housing is unprepared to support an inundation of transplants. Due to a relatively small supply of homes compared to a sudden influx of homebuyers and renters, housing prices soared upwards from historically affordable rates. The housing shortage in Phoenix is an example of a statewide trend primarily affecting medium- and low-wage workers. Predictably, this shortage generated an explosion of homelessness. Between 2020 and 2022, the national rate of homelessness increased by less than 1%. Arizona saw an increase of 23% during the same time. Of the more than 13,000 people in Arizona experiencing homelessness, 59.2% are unsheltered. In response, the city has increased housing construction, consistently ranking in the top 10 markets in…
