As promised, ASUNM has some scholarship updates for the week: First, we are happy to announce that we had 32 applications for our most recent $1,000 scholarship and those will be awarded shortly. Thank you to everyone who applied and continues to follow our executive team’s tireless efforts both through the Daily Lobo and our social media accounts.
A new semester is underway and with it ASUNM is determined to finish our academic year strong. Within just the first two weeks, we have been up to Santa Fe many times regarding our Capital Outlay Project and the Lottery Scholarship, held our first rounds of budget workshops, and begun working on our new outreach efforts for this semester. We have a lot on the docket for this semester, but we can’t do any of it without YOUR help. Here are the major ways you can help us get started:
Halloween has really got me thinking that life, at any stage, is about creating. As kids we are busy fashioning the perfect costumes; as we get older, it’s crafting the suspension of disbelief at a haunted house; and as college students, no matter what we decide is our perfect Halloween recipe, we’re making memories. As I sit here, watching movies with the people I love, I can’t help but wonder: are we actually creating enough? Or are we just doing what’s needed to get by and maintain what’s already there? Do the realities of adulthood limit our willingness to try new things? ASUNM is a strange balance between maintenance and creation. On any given year your student government is doing a lot of the same things as the year prior, because that’s what has worked habitually. But each administration runs on the promise of something different, something better.
In a world where, on one hand “I’m Shmacked” attempts to capture what our University has to offer in one weekend, and on the other we can spend countless hours debating the future of the lottery scholarship, I can’t help but wonder: what is college really about?
Lately there has been a lot of talk about student fees. Somewhere in the breakdown of the fees students pay every semester, YOU are paying a student government fee. If you are a full time student at UNM, every semester you pay ASUNM $20. So why not take advantage of your money? Well, here are the ways you can do just that:
The Associated Students of the University of New Mexico has recently adopted the hashtag #YOURstudentgovernment. Yet though our social media campaigns have changed, some things remain the same. In the past four years that I’ve been involved in Student Government, the groups seeking our help and attending our meetings and events have remained the same. The truth of the matter is that ASUNM is here for the entire undergraduate body, which is roughly 20,000 students, but we’ve been missing the mark.
Who honestly cares about ASUNM? What do they even do (aside from wearing bright colors and harassing people twice a year asking them to vote)? We know that student government can seem irrelevant, and the work we do sometimes doesn’t quite reach the student body in the way we hope it to. But we wouldn’t stand out there in heels, getting sunburns and creepily approaching strangers, if we didn’t believe in something bigger.
Solutions by The State News
