Thursday, August 26, 2021
PHOENIX – The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announced an official alliance Tuesday – a move that could impact the athletic programs at Arizona State and Arizona as well as the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.
“Despite the shifting landscape, there are some critical constants among many college athletics, and specifically among every one of the 41 institutions in our three conferences,” said new Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff. “These constants include a resolute commitment to our student-athletes, a commitment to both academic and athletic excellence and a commitment to protecting that which makes college sports so special for our student-athletes, alumni and fans.”
The decision could pave the way for matchups appealing to Pac-12 fans, such as Arizona State-Ohio State or Arizona-Clemson. It also has the potential to give the alliance leverage in determining the structure of a 12-team College Football Playoff format, in how playoff games are divvied up among bowl games like the Fiesta and in television contract negotiations.
There is no signed contract or legal document to bind the alliance, as it operates under a gentlemen’s agreement. However, the conferences will join forces on critical issues in college athletics.
“It’s about trust,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “It’s about, we’ve looked each other in the eye. We’ve made an agreement. We have great confidence and faith.”
Among the prevalent issues within collegiate athletics, the alliance hopes to address are athlete mental and physical health; strong academic experience and support; diversity; gender equity; future structure of the NCAA; and postseason championships and future formats.
In the wake of plans by Texas and Oklahoma to move from the Big 12 to the SEC by 2025, the new alliance between the three Power Five conferences will add much-needed leverage for the 41 institutions involved.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
WASHINGTON – Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino said he is “fed up” with the federal government’s COVID-19 ban on nonessential border crossings, which has been extended for another month, further crippling local businesses that rely on cross-border customers.
The ban, which was set to expire Saturday, has been extended through at least Sept. 21, which will mark just under 18 months of travel restrictions at land ports of entry at the Canadian and Mexican borders.
“You know, this needs to end,” said Andy Carey, executive director of the U.S.-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership. “It’s been going on for almost a year and a half.”
But Carey said nobody believes the border will open by next month. In the meantime, businesses around Nogales are closing down, losing customers and hurting economically.
“The businesses are completely empty,” Garino said. “They took their merchandise, they’re gone.”
The ban on nonessential border crossings between the three countries was first put into place on March 24, 2020, in response to the first flush of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was extended a month later, when Customs and Border Protection cited the 720,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. at the time.
The ban has been extended monthly since then, with the latest extension noting the 36.1 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and the presence of the highly contagious delta variant as reasons to continue the restrictions.
In a Federal Register notice Monday announcing the latest extension, CBP said that U.S. and Mexican officials “mutually determined that non-essential travel between the United States and Mexico posed additional risk of transmission and spread of the virus associated with COVID–19.”
The move comes as the number of cases in Arizona and the U.S., driven by the delta variant, has been climbing steadily after months of relatively low infection rates from spring through early summer. Where Arizona was averaging 480 new cases a day in late March, the number had risen to 2,979 cases on average in the past week.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
WASHINGTON – Arizona is on pace to record its 1 millionth COVID-19 infection within the next week, and health experts fear that kids in schools and the looming Labor Day holiday will only make matters worse.
The Arizona Department of Health Services reported 979,580 cases as of Friday and its data shows that the state had been averaging 2,941 new cases every day over the past week, as the highly contagious delta variant continued its spread.
Another 53 people died Friday from COVID-19 in Arizona, bringing the death toll in the state to 18,561.
Despite the surge in new cases, health experts said that Arizona continues to lack aggressive mitigation efforts that they said could stem the tide.
“For some time, you certainly haven’t been as aggressive with mask-wearing and vaccination,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said of the state.
State officials have refused to issue a mask mandate and Gov. Doug Ducey this week issued an order banning local governments from enforcing vaccination requirements. That came the same week that Ducey unveiled a “relief program” that would direct federal COVID-19 funds to schools that do not enforce mask mandates.
Given the lax mandates in the state, Benjamin said residents have an even greater “degree of personal responsibility” for fighting the virus, especially with the upcoming Labor Day holiday that he expects will worsen exposure.
Monday, August 23, 2021
When Ne’Lexia Galloway started her job as the Black outreach representative for U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego in January 2020, she thought that the Phoenix Democrat would listen to people that look like her. Fifteen months later, she felt used, and quit her job.
Galloway posted on Twitter that she left after concluding that Gallego, who is in his fourth term representing the Arizona congressional district with the largest Black population, had no actual interest in engaging his Black constituents. When mass arrests of protesters and controversial felony and gang-related prosecutions were taking place in Phoenix, the congressman failed to “speak up about the injustices that were occurring in his district to Black and Brown constituents,“ she wrote.
Galloway’s statement brought attention to the growing frustration Black community leaders have expressed about Gallego. Some call him anti-Black. Others said he does nothing for Black people. They wonder, does he do anything to represent them?
For five months beginning in May 2020, thousands took to the streets in Arizona to protest the deaths of Black people at the hands of police: George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, Dion Johnson in Phoenix, and scores of others whose names didn’t make headlines but died after encounters with law enforcement. Phoenix police officers arrested hundreds, sometimes on false felony charges and trumped up gang charges. Activists with local groups like Black Lives Matter Metro Phoenix and Mass Liberation Arizona denounced police for arresting protestors and lying on arrest documents, accusing Maricopa County of prosecuting political opponents.
Those complaints, arrests and prosecutions are the heart of several federal lawsuits and a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department that was announced this month.
Gallego responded to the DOJ investigation, saying the need to closely examine police policies, behaviors and reforms “has never been more clear.”
Galloway didn’t understand how Gallego now expressed clarity on this issue, when he lacked clarity for months in addressing his constituents’ complaints. She posted on Aug. 7 her experiences calling her former boss’ words “political theatre.”
Congressman Gallego’s office made a statement about @CivilRights investigating the Phoenix Police Department. From my experience I know this to be political theatre. “Accountability MUST be the Rule not the exception”-Congressman Gallego
Full statement:https://t.co/11nDxaMIo7
— NeLexia Galloway (@NelexiaG) August 7, 2021
Galloway is now executive director of the Maricopa County Democratic Party. She emphasized that the experiences she shared on Aug. 7 only represent her perspective, not that of the places she is affiliated with.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Students in the Marana School District joined a growing number of classrooms across the state in wearing masks when indoors.
The Marana Unified School District governing board voted 3-2 at a special meeting on Friday to require universal use of masks when indoors on school property and district buses.
The mask requirement starts Monday and will continue until Sept. 29, when a new state law banning mask requirements goes into effect. Masks will remain optional outdoors and exemptions will be provided for medical, religious and specific instructional reasons.
The board considered the mask mandate after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner ruled in favor of Phoenix Union High School District, stating the district did not violate state law with its mask mandate, because the law prohibiting schools from mandating masks does not go into effect until Sept 29, 90 days after the legislative session adjourns.
Marana followed the Sunnyside Unified School District, when its board passed the mask requirement on Thursday, and several other districts, including Tucson Unified, Catalina Foothills, Amphitheater and Flowing Wells.
As of Friday, Marana had the second-highest number of cases reported since July 20 with 184, according to data from the Pima County Health Department. The Vail School District, which does not require masks, tops the list with 186 since July 20.
Vail began the school year earlier than other districts. Its governing board voted to make masks optional at their June 8 meeting and has not revisited that decision. The number of COVID-19 cases has dropped from the peak of 69 cases reported as of Aug. 1 to 35 cases reported between Aug. 6 and Aug. 15.
Marana Unified governing board member Tom Carlson, who opposed the motion along with Dan Post, said he was told by Superintendent Dan Streeter that the district may be over-reporting COVID-19 cases by 40%, because they report cases contracted outside of the school environment. He believes this would put them on par with the Amphitheater Unified School District, which had 67 active cases of COVID-19 as of Friday.
Pima County Health Department Director Dr. Theresa Cullen has said some school cases are contracted in the community, not in the classroom. The standing order for the health department published on Aug. 17 requires that schools report all positive cases to the department and the health department does not specify where they were contracted. Marana reported 153 active cases on Friday. They will update the dashboard in about a week, said district spokesperson Alli Benjamin.
The Tucson Unified School District governing board voted to require masks on Aug. 5, before the ruling on mask mandates. The district reported 142 cases since July 20 and, as of Aug 20, had 63 active cases.
Catalina Foothills and Flowing Wells announced they would implement mask requirements this week, but reported fewer cases since July 20, with 11 and 22 cases respectively as of Aug. 20. They are the only two school districts that have required masks despite relatively low numbers.
As of Friday, the Sunnyside and Amphitheater school districts reported 92 and 65 cases since July 20.
Dr. Joe Gerald, an epidemiologist who has tracked COVID’s transmission since it first arrived in March 2020, noted that in the week ending Aug. 15, children accounted for roughly one-fourth of all COVID cases and for the first time, the rates of cases among children aged 5 to 9 and aged 10 to 14 surpassed those of all other age groups. Gerald said he expected more outbreaks in schools, especially those that don't follow strict mitigation protocols.
“Resumption of in-person instruction in the face of high community transmission, low vaccination rates, prohibition of universal masking, lack of surveillance testing, and minimal physical distancing is leading to frequent school-related outbreaks and has the potential to accelerate community transmission,” Gerald wrote in his weekly update on the spread of the virus. “On a positive note, several K-12 and university systems are challenging the governor’s prohibition of mask mandates.”
