At UNM, students pick up tab for wasteful spending

Editor,

If the regents intend to continue to allow the current emphasis on the growth and increase in prosperity of the highest levels of administration at the expense of all other members of the University community, they should mount an advertising campaign to reflect the current state of things to the community. They could save money on a consultant by using the template of a well-known MasterCard commercial campaign:

Annual deferred compensation for President David Schmidly and Executive Vice President David Harris: $180,000. Annual combined automobile allowance for Schmidly and Harris: $51,000. Annual cost of "image consultant" for Schmidly: $120,000. Annual housing allowance for Schmidly's Placitas home: $45,000. Annual State of New Mexico pension for Harris: $65,000. Cost to regents and Regents President Jamie Koch: $0.

Some costs to UNM students include more incompetence by moving Student Services to South Campus; more corruption by hiring Schmidly's son so he can write his own job description once he's on payroll; no help when you need it because of the low student-to-adviser ratio; more classes you can't get into because of fewer faculty, which equates to taking longer to graduate. Total cost to UNM students: not priceless, just an unknown increase in your lifetime debt load.

Jan Roebuck

UNM faculty