Ethnic, women's centers a great help to veterans

Editor,

It is imperative that UNM students understand how important services for underrepresented students really are.

The University is designated as a Hispanic-serving university, but the majority of students at UNM are not Hispanic, African-American or American Indian.

UNM serves a little more than .75 percent of the 1 percent of the total student population of 35,000 students at UNM Accessibility Services. The national rate of attendance for students with disabilities in large institutions is about 15 percent, with 10 percent being the generally accepted figure used as a target for budgeting purposes at many large postsecondary schools. Yet, UNM is serving just .75 percent of the 35,000 student population.

In the article published in Thursday's Daily Lobo, ASUNM President Ashley Fate questions whether funding for the ethnic centers and the Women's Resource Center is appropriate. Fate said, "I think we need to take into consideration where that kind of money goes toward and whether or not it is necessary to the well-being of every student."

At this particular time, the U.S. is fighting two very distant wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Minorities, underrepresented at UNM and other centers of higher learning across the nation, are overrepresented in the ranks of the U.S. military and are doing the brunt of the fighting in the front lines of these wars. The men and women of color, who are overrepresented in the prosecution of these wars, are also underserved in programs of support at the U.S. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs and services offered to returning veterans from these conflicts by the state of New Mexico.

The ethnic centers and the Women's Resource Center are vitally important to returning U.S. veterans from these conflicts in the almost total absence of real services in the U.S. military, Veterans Affairs and New Mexico programs for these wage-earning, mortgage-paying mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who have been harmed in these distant conflicts.

It is quite simply the case that the ethnic centers and the Women's Resource Center may be the only places of hope and healing that these men and women have when they return from the bitter wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We need our ethnic centers and our Women's Resource Center for veterans and all minorities at UNM. We need better funding for these centers now more than ever before.

Frank Martin

UNM student