.The Daily sat down with University President Bob Bruininks on Monday at Morrill Hall, where the president talked about the end of the state legislative session, the Olympics controversy and his summer plans.

The University’s study of the Northern Alignment light-rail route reaffirmed its preferred route through Dinkytown. Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed funding for that project, but there’s still a few weeks left in the legislative session. Would a delay help or hurt the University’s stake in this project?

In fairness, we do not have all the information we need to make a judgment as to which direction is the best one to take.

Based upon our early findings, we believe the Northern Alignment … is the best way to go.

We think it’s likely to be cheaper to build. Perhaps it would require tens of millions of dollars less in what they call mitigations costs.

The train would then go to the part of the campus and through a community that will represent the most promising areas for development in the next 20 to 50 years.

This plan would be building for the future, not building the train for the past.

Would a delay give the school more time to gather more support for the Northern Alignment?

I personally do not accept the argument that this will take more time and cost more money. I actually think that’s an excuse. If you can build a bridge, a very complex bridge, in a year, construct a football stadium in two years, you ought to be able to engineer about a mile and a half of railroad track and still keep on schedule and get this in to the federal government on time.

I may not understand some of the complexities here, and I’m willing to listen to those arguments, but I think we should work with the idea that we’re going to try to keep this on time and schedule. If the money is not there and the project is delayed, then we’ll deal with that particular issue.

But I will not be very happy, and the University’s Board of Regents will not find it acceptable to plan this train and develop this train … without listening to the legitimate views and concerns that we have about it and what its impact will be on the University and the surrounding communities.

I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t been particularly impressed with the way this project has approached the University of Minnesota, but we’re still deeply committed to getting to the right answer.

With only a few weeks left in the legislative session, how optimistic are you that any higher education bills that are passed won’t undercut the University too much?

I’m guardedly optimistic.

The budget of the state is in very deep trouble and we anticipate that the state will have a billion dollar budgetary shortfall. The governor recommended that the University receive nearly a 4 percent decrease in this next year.

The Legislature has proposed something quite a bit lower than $27.5 million dollars; it’d be more like $10 million dollars.

If we had to take $27.5 million in a state reduction, it would be very difficult this next year.

It’s quite likely we won’t know until sometime in the middle of May.

Let’s say that University funding takes a big hit. What’s the next step in making sure this school is affordable for students?

That’s one of the central questions facing the University of Minnesota and all of higher education.

During the last four years, we’ve raised about $230 million in new money for scholarship support, most of it for undergraduate students.

We will do everything possible to balance the University’s budget without asking for a tuition increase. So we’re going to first cut our budgets, reduce our investments that we feel we need to make in areas to maintain quality and the excellence of the University.

You’ve mentioned fundraising a lot. Is that the only way the University can help combat tuition hikes, or are there new policies or programs that could help?

The University has engaged in very serious attempts to reduce its costs.

Despite the enormous increase in energy costs in our society, the University of Minnesota has actually decreased its energy costs by about $5 million this year. Prescription drug costs for its employees have been reduced by $8 million this year. We’re looking for other ways to reduce costs.

Last week, Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, introduced a bill that would allow students to carry guns on college campuses. The University wouldn’t be affected because of its level of autonomy, but what’s your take on it?

I’ve never bought the argument that there’s safety in guns and the increase in the carrying of guns on a university campus. I simply don’t know of any evidence that suggests that it’s a prudent public policy.

I don’t believe that the tragic events we’ve seen at Northern Illinois (University) and Virginia Tech would be avoided by a number of students having guns on campus and taking responsibility for protecting themselves and the university community. I think that is best left to law enforcement officials and the leadership of the University of Minnesota.

With the presidential election approaching, many consider this a time when candidates and their campaigns take negative tones as the race tightens. Are you still excited for the political wave to hit Minnesota with the Republican National Convention, or is it stressful?

I actually love this campaign. This has been one of the more interesting political campaigns for me in the last, I’d say, 30 years.

I would say it’s safe to argue that many of them were much tougher and perhaps more intense than even the one we’ve been witnessing in the last, approximately one year.

The difference today is that a comment made by a candidate or a comment made about a candidate can travel around the world in an instant. During the great Lincoln-Douglas debate, it would take days for the news of the debates to get around the country through telegraph and other means of communications. Communication wasn’t magnified in the same sense it is today. I’m not aware of the fact that Abraham Lincoln had a Web site.

One of the things I would say that does disappoint me somewhat in the current political campaign, is the candidates -Republican, Democrat – have not (seriously dealt with) the issues of health care cost, the rising cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

If we don’t reform these programs, they can literally compromise the economic future and quality of life in Minnesota and the rest of the country.

We should also have a richer debate on the role of the United States, the leadership of the United States in the world, particularly with regard to the developing communities around the world.

The third, obviously, is the one we’ve been talking about, and that’s the future of education in our society. We live in a globally competitive economy, an economy that requires innovation and creativity for its very survival. That doesn’t happen without educated people.

The Beijing Summer Olympics are on the way and with much controversy. What are your thoughts?

I think the United States and the rest of the world should participate fully in the Olympic Games and use this opportunity to address these very important and, I think, essential issues of human rights.

I was struck that the Dalai Lama, or at least a representative of the Dalai Lama who visited here, felt that people should participate in the Olympic Games, while also expressing a good deal of concern about the future of human rights in his country and other countries around the world.

There are three more weeks of class but this is the last Rappin’ with Robert of the semester. Other than University commitments, what are your summer plans?

They’re not fully formed yet, but one of the things that I love doing in the summer, obviously getting out more, exercising, so I will spend some time in the back of a canoe, or in a kayak, on some of Minnesota’s great waterways.

It’s possible I will take a trip to southern Africa to work on a national and a University agenda – an education and research agenda with African universities, mainly in Tanzania and South Africa.