Anchorage Daily News

A year ago, when Gov. Sarah Palin vetoed $1 million to plan a huge sports arena at UAA, we supported her decision. With state revenues uncertain, and UAA getting so little funding in that year's capital budget, a sports arena seemed like a questionable priority.

UAA went back to the drawing board. Over the past several months, it has surveyed the public, talked to students about their needs, visited nearby community councils to hear their concerns, and refined its proposal.

The result is a more responsible plan. UAA's new arena would be smaller but better suited to its most urgent needs, and located in a more suitable spot.

To which we can only say, hooray.

The Legislature put $15 million in this year's capital budget to design the building and prepare the site. The total cost is estimated at $80 million.

UAA has made an excellent case that it needs more sports facilities. The time is right, since the state has a multi-billion dollar surplus. We urge Gov. Palin to get the project started.

The existing Wells Fargo Sports Complex was built some 30 years ago. With a seating capacity of 1,200, it holds fewer spectators than either the East or West high school gyms. Its locker rooms are so inadequate that tall basketball players can't stand up straight in them. There is a tiny weight room and hardly any office space for sports staff or physical education faculty.

While UAA has just the one basketball court, UA-Fairbanks has five, notes UAA athletic director Steve Cobb. If the new sports arena were built, "We'd jump all the way up to average," he jokes.

There are now 11 intercollegiate athletic teams at UAA using the Wells Fargo Complex. Students also take physical education classes there and swim or lift weights for fun and personal health.

If the new arena is built, the Wells Fargo complex would again be the primary recreational facility for the 15,000 students, says chancellor Fran Ulmer.

The new building would house all competitive sports but hockey. The university hopes to work a deal later with the city for a joint facility for hockey, perhaps off campus.

The campus sports arena could seat a 3,500 crowd for basketball, volleyball and other university and community events.

Compare that with the 2007 proposal for a complex, with one gym that would have room for 7,500 spectators, and another gym that would hold 3,500 to 5,000. The cost of that behemoth? Who knows?

The university switched locations from the original plan. Instead of building near East High, on a boggy site south of Northern Lights Boulevard, the new site is between Providence Hospital and UAA's student housing.

The wetlands at the Northern Lights Boulevard location would be expensive to build on, as well as being home to popular trails. That site was not popular with the nearby community.

"We're very happy they're going to scale back and build in a different location," said Susan Klein, chair of the University Area Community Council. A lot of people use the trails off Northern Lights, she said.

UAA has done its homework. A thriving university needs a satisfactory sports facility, and this project deserves state support.

BOTTOM LINE: Steel isn't getting any cheaper. Let the Seawolves prepare for construction of their new arena.

Liberal talk radio

I don't know the real reason liberal radio talk show host Aaron Selbig was sacked from KUDO-AM. Maybe it was the lousy ratings. Maybe it was that he dared go where the station's offstage masters at IBEW didn't want him to go.

I do know this: Liberal talk radio is a lousy business proposition.

And there are good reasons for that.

No. 1 -- Liberals have minds of their own. Unlike Rush Limbaugh's dittoheads, they don't respond like Pavlov's dogs when the master rings their emotional bells.

Liberals operate higher up the brain stem than most talk radio listeners. Liberals use their heads; conservatives go for the gut. (The term "liberal" in liberal arts education doesn't mean getting politically indoctrinated; it means thinking for yourself.)

Second, liberals have real jobs during the day. Jobs that require using their brains. They aren't sitting around in T-shirts and boxer shorts all afternoon, beer in hand, yelling from the Barcalounger, "You tell 'em, Rush!" Liberals aren't stickin' it to the man by goofing off at their dead-end jobs and listening to rants on the radio while munching fatty snacks jimmied out of the company vending machine.

Most commercial talk radio listeners are looking for entertainment, not enlightenment. They enjoy a rhetorical circus. They don't care if facts get in the way of a good argument.

Liberals have a reality-based view of the world. And let's face it -- reality is soooo B-O-R-I-N-G.

Liberal talk radio is a great sedative. If I'm having trouble getting to sleep at night, I can slap on the headphones, cue up a podcast of NPR's "Talk of the Nation," and I'm off to dreamland in no time.

The popularity of right-wing talk radio would be irrelevant, just a quirk of the American communications market, if it weren't for the political implications. Dittoheads can be stampeded into mass action that frightens politicians who might otherwise do the right thing.

For this sad fact of American life, I blame the educational system. Students these days just don't learn to think for themselves.

The biggest sign of trouble in American education is not low test scores. It's not abysmal graduation rates. It's the continuing commercial success of right-wing talk radio.

-- Matt Zencey

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