Location of new dorms raises some concerns

The dorms on south campus have yet to be approved, but they’ve already prompted claims of preferential treatment for athletes.

GPSA President Lissa Knudsen said south campus dorms would give preferential treatment to athletes because they will be close to athletic complexes.

“There are just a lot of concerns that we have with that particular site, and one of those concerns is that it’s located adjacent to the athletic facility,” Knudsen said. “This seems to be a way to cater specifically to the athletes — it’s the only thing that I can see that’s going on there.”

Steve Beffort, Vice President of Institutional Support Services, said the south campus dorms are not intended to give student athletes advantages over other students. He said the dorms are being built for upperclassmen use.

“There have been some people trying to imply that it’s only an athletic venture, and it really has nothing to do with athletes,” Beffort said. “The whole point is
athletes would have the same option to live there as other people if they’re upperclassmen.”

Knudsen said the University would violate NCAA guidelines if the south campus dorms are used mainly for athletes.

According to NCAA bylaw 16.5.1.1, athletics dormitories are defined as “institutional dormitories in which at least 50 percent of the residents are student-athletes.”

Sports Information Director Greg Remington said it’s not possible for half of the new dorms to be occupied by student-athletes. He said there are 415 student-athletes — 125 of them freshmen — attending UNM this year. Since the proposed dorms are reserved for upperclassmen only, Remington said less than 300 student athletes could live in the residence hall, which will have at least 800 beds.
Sports Compliance Manager Dawn Martinez said athletic dorms would never be allowed at UNM.

“From the athletic department perspective, we wouldn’t support athletic-only dorms because it is against the NCAA rules,” she said. “Even if somebody came up and said, ‘We’re going to give you so many millions of dollars and build dorms for athletes,’ we still couldn’t use them, and they’d just sit there and look pretty.”

Martinez said no student-athletes have ever had to move out of their dorms because of the guidelines, and there are, on average, less than 200 student-athletes in all of UNM’s residence halls.

“Typically from year to year our number of on campus athletes don’t really change, and it’s usually about 170 to 175 students,” she said. “There are only four dorms where it could be numerically possible that more than half of our kids could take those spots.”

Beffort said the south campus dorms will not give preference to athletes. He said every UNM student will have an equal opportunity to live there.

“That’s not why were building those dorms there,” Beffort said. “They were never looked at as athletic dorms at all — they will be built because we need additional bed space.”