by Andrew Beale/Daily Lobo
Wolfpack wants to “howl yes” on sustainability, campus security and free student tickets to athletic events.
Wolfpack ASUNM presidential candidate David Conway and vice presidential candidate Zoe Riebli said these issues are important to Wolfpack’s goal of moving UNM forward.
“The concise message is that we’re trying to bring the University toward a progressive future,” Conway said. “I have the experience to get things done, and we have people on our slate with great ideas.”
Riebli said communication is important to Wolfpack’s goal of moving UNM in a progressive direction.
“We need to work with GPSA and the administration to keep an open communication,” she said. “I appreciate how the administration takes student opinions seriously.”
Conway said keeping a good relationship with the administration is important to Wolfpack.
“I’ve had very good interactions with the administration. It’s important. We have to voice our opinions respectfully. We have to remain stern, but respectful,” he said. “I have a rapport with President Schmidly. We’ve collaborated on a lot of things.”
Conway said making the campus safer is one of the top priorities of the slate.
“If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety is one of the first things. You can’t learn if you don’t feel safe,” he said.
Riebli said she appreciates efforts already made to boost campus security, but that there is still room for improvement.
“I think that was great when they did the safety walk through, and if they know there’s an event on campus they could have more security,” she said. “Also, we need more of the blue telephone things.”
Conway said there are several things that go into making the campus more secure.
“I wish you could just say it’s a silver-bullet issue that could be solved with a silver bullet,” he said. “We need to increase lighting. We need to increase campus patrol, and we have to make students more aware of the dangers of living on an urban campus.”
Conway said preserving free student tickets to sporting events is another priority.
“We’ve only had free student tickets for seven years. This is not something that’s a UNM tradition yet, but it needs to be,” he said.
Riebli said making UNM a more sustainable campus requires a variety of things, but a good place to start is making the SUB more sustainable.
“Sustainability is such a broad term. There’s a lot that goes into it,” she said. “One thing we want to work on is the SUB, because that’s our building. If we can make our building more sustainable, we can show the administration that that’s a direction we want to go in.”
Riebli said she wants to expand campus recycling programs.
“I would like to see that everywhere there’s a trash can, there’s a recycling bin with it,” she said.
Conway said the budget crisis at UNM and in the state is an issue that the next ASUNM senate will need to address.
“We want to help the University through an extremely difficult economic time,” he said. “In my life, when things are most difficult, that’s when you become the best you can be, and that’s what the University’s going through right now. And we feel (Wolfpack) leadership is going to help us get there.”
*Early voting for the ASUNM election starts April 8. The general election is on April 14.
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The candidates on the Wolfpack slate are David Conway, Zoe Riebli, Terence Brown, Alonzo Castillo, Adria Cordova, Greg Golden, Jorge Jimenez, Jaimee Perea, Adam Ornelas, Heidi Overton, Rosa Rosas and Kelly Williamson.*
Full Circle has big plans for the University if the slate gets elected to ASUNM.
Many of the changes, including improving campus security and increasing internship accessibility have a large impact on UNM and its inhabitants, said Laz Cardenas, Full Circle presidential candidate.
“These goals are all attainable. We only have a year to make this difference and I can make most of these changes right away,” he said.
Enhancing campus security tops the priority list, Cardenas said, in hopes of preventing any further incidents of violence.
“What really comes to mind is security. How are you going to improve security?” he said. “There are two ways in my mind … make sure we replace the light bulbs that are out, and put more call boxes in certain locations.”
Vice presidential candidate Joseph Colbert said maintaining sustainability with University expansion is another important focus.
“I want to shoot for more recycling bins, more sustainable infrastructure in the new buildings being built and those being renovated, as far as any kind of construction that goes on with residence halls and new residence halls. Make sure they are good structures but also sustainable structures.”
Cardenas said one of Full Circle’s ideas is for ASUNM to create a database to give students easy access to internship and scholarship opportunities.
“You come to college because most of us want to get a job right after, and an internship guides that experience,” he said. “That networking is important for an individual, so when they graduate they don’t just have a degree, they have those connections and they have that work experience from whatever internship they came from.”
Members of Full Circle better represent to the student body as a whole than the Wolfpack slate, Cardenas said.
“We are a more diverse group of individuals. I look at them and I see a slate that is mostly comprised of people that are from the Greek system and that are athletes,” he said. “We are resident advisers; we come from the residence halls. Our diversity brings the representation. The more people we know the more resources we have.”
Colbert said diversity is important, because it is the student government’s job to speak for the UNM student body.
“You are the voice of the students; otherwise, most students (who) come here don’t seem like they really care that much,” he said. “But we try to reach out to them and get their input so we can take that to the administration.”
The Full Circle slate will follow through on its promises, Cardenas said, and the students can feel free to hold him accountable.
“We’ll get this done,” he said. “So many people have said that, but I will pledge and I will have a timeline and communicate with the students with every resource that we have to get this stuff done.”
Trust in your representatives is crucial, Colbert said, and he would provide that as vice president.
“I’m going to keep it real,” he said. “I’m going to be truthful to everyone, if you ask me a question I’m open. What you get from me is all me, not some pawn of the administration. I’m here for the students and that’s how I’ve always been.”
