I just realized that in my previous post I mentioned that I was going
to return to the subject of travel costs, but never did, so here goes.  There
seem to be two components of peoples' complaints about travel to Alaska.  Time
and money.
        First, time.  Yes, it takes a while to get here, it's a three hour
flight from Seattle, another 45 minutes from here to Fairbanks.  First of all,
although I have not been blessed with the monetary resources to be able to
afford to take long trips frequently during school, I have found that a long
plane trip is just about as good an opportunity as one gets in college to do
homework.  I know some hockey players.. do you think that they would be doing
something more constructive with those extra 8-10 hours out of their weekend
not spent on travel?  I don't.  And this trip has to be made at *most* twice
a year.  Jet-lag?  Gimme a break.  When Alabama-Huntsville flew up, *maybe*. The
difference between the effects of a flight from Denver to the Northern tip of
Michigan and a flight from Denver to Anchorage or Fairbanks is negligible.
        So that leaves money.  Alaska used to be a very well-off state.  In
portions of the private sector it still is.  The public sector and the
University system on the other hand, is not.  My school faces budget crunches
that have forced us to raise tuition 30% in the last two years while reducing
services and classes to the bare minimum of accreditation.  At the same time,
we not only pay to fly our team to other schools for half of our schedule, we
currently pay for a large portion of the costs of bringing up the teams that
play us here.  This is UAA's commitment to the game and it's belief in college
hockey and it's pride in our team.  Maybe the rest of the teams need to ask
themselves how dedicated they are to a fair sport where every team that proves
that it deserves to gets to play on an even field with everyone else.  It seems
to me that "Hooray for the home team!" becomes a very shallow cry when others
are deprived of their right to compete at the level at which they deserve to
compete.
 
Brady Clark
UAA Math/CS Department
I speak only for myself.