UNM’s Public Interest Research Group is asking for student funds to assist them in recruiting statewide students for their organization and becoming a part of the larger PIRG community. Members of the chapter presented a request for funding to the Student Fee Review Board asking for $84,000 of student fees for the school year.
The funding would allow PIRG to hire a professional staff to assist in their expansion plans, said PIRG representative Vicky Scheidler.
“One concern that comes up a lot is ‘Oh my gosh. You are asking for 80-something thousand dollars’ and we really don’t see it as that huge (of an) expenditure,” she said. “We feel that we are remarkably efficient in the way that we spend our money. We are only paying for a portion of their time. We are not paying for their whole salary by any means.”
The proposed staff would include adding an organizer, organizing director, state director and field director, Scheidler said. The cost of the state representatives would be split among other regional universities amounting to the chapter paying 25 percent of their salary, she said.
A larger staff could allow PIRG to unite students statewide for a larger impact, she said.
“We are going to be lobbying in New Mexico for issues that students care about, like college affordability,” she said. “If we have students all across the state joining together, instead of just students at UNM, we are going to hold a lot more clout in Santa Fe.”
PIRG’s growth would also include collaborating with UNM’s Institute of Public Law, where public policy dialogue methods would be taught, said Paul Biderman, IPL director. PIRG members would be trained to handle public forum meetings with student fees.
“PIRG and the kind of effort IPL has been making about civil discourse are a really a good fit,” he said.
“IPL has been working on making our state more collaborative in terms of public policy. To have people talk to each other, taking into (account) everybody’s values and concerns and not trying to override them.”
Scheidler said the proposed hirees would aide in bringing the two groups together.
“That’s another place where the organizer would fit in really well, just assisting in bridging that really huge gap that currently exists between main campus and north campus,” she said.
Jake Wellman, ASUNM representative, said at the meeting he had concerns over how organizations around the community were going to be involved in PIRG.
Scheidler said student outreach would be a main priority with the staff.
“One big thing for us is to be as representative of students at UNM as possible,” she said. “Right now, we have a database of more than 1,000 students that have expressed an interest in PIRG, so I can definitely see that multiplying by quite a bit if we did have someone helping us all the time. Also, we have worked in the past with the lobbying committee at ASUNM, but there is definitely room for improvement.”
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UNM student and PIRG member Brianna Hastings said she gained valuable leadership experience from her involvement in the program and thinks an expansion would benefit UNM students.
“I would really like to see PIRG get the funding necessary to expand its program and have the ability to reach others to (become) potential student leaders,” she said. “There are students who have specific ideas and might really want to get involved but are painfully shy and want and need guidance on leadership, and I think PIRG can have a really positive impact on the UNM campus.”
According to the U.S. PIRG Web site, the group organizes around issues like product safety, political corruption and voting rights.
