ASUNM holds senate election today

Undergraduates can vote for their student government representatives today in the Associated Students of UNM fall election.

ASUNM makes decisions that have long-term e ects on students, said Vice President Michael Westervelt. Senators in the student government pass resolutions and bills and have a $500,000 budget used to fund student groups.

“Students on this campus too often don’t feel represented at times where they have a student senator,” Westervelt said. “Even if you aren’t part of any group or organization, and you are just a part of the UNM campus, you have a senator who represents you.”

Ten full-term senate seats are up for grabs today. ere are also two half-term seats to ll, because two senators with a semester left in their term will not be returning for the spring semester.

Less than 10 percent of the student body voted in the spring election. Westervelt said low voter turnout is due to misinformation and lack of information about ASUNM. There are 24 candidates who want to have a say in how that money is spent. ere are 10 candidates from the “Bam!” slate and 10 from the “Bridge” slate, and four students are running independently.

“ There is so much information in these slates,” Westervelt said. “Although we don’t recognize slates, these groups of people that get together to run together have done so much — Facebook postings, I know there have been Web sites in the past put up, iers that they hand out.” Both slates, and all candidates, aim to increase student involvement.

But more speci cally, the Bridge slate is running to increase awareness of student resources, create a universal UNM activities calendar, improve the ASUNM Web site — which is not regularly updated — and add a live chat feature to the site, according to a ier from the slate. The Bam! slate’s goals are to increase computer pods, to restrict printing costs and limits, to continue to support free bus passes, to limit the increase of tuition and fees and to develop an outreach group with students to get them more involved, according to a ier put out by the slate.

Connor Lites, an independent candidate, said he wants to increase transparency by publishing senators’ voting records in the Daily Lobo. Diego Montoya, also independent, said he wants to increase dorm parking.

Brandon Call and Matthew Olguin, the last two independent candidates, were not available for comment.

Along with senatorial selection, there is also an ASUNM constitutional amendment on the ballot that, if passed, will allow associate justices to serve more than one term. The student court is made up of a chief justice and four associate justices who hear cases regarding laws, money allocations and actions of ASUNM committees.