Lazaro “Laz” Cardenas is running for ASUNM president on the Full Circle slate. The Daily Lobo sat down to talk with him about printing, parking, security and the differences between his opponent and himself. The ASUNM election is April 14.
Daily Lobo: What are your key policy issues?
Lazaro Cardenas: Right now there is not a rollover on printing charges. So say you have 100 pages. It won’t roll over to the next semester. I think that needs to change. People need to be given the incentive if we are going to be going on the sustainability type of thing that IT has done. Why don’t they reward the people that are not printing as much?
Also, we need to work with departments. Some departments require that you print out a certain amount of pages and if you don’t bring those pages to classes then you are docked off points.
DL: What are your views on parking?
LC: There is an infrequent amount of shuttles getting from place to place. They are kind of lagging and busses are running kind of behind from five to 10 minutes. That is OK — it is just inefficient. We need to find some way to work with Parking and Transportation to limit that down and increase the amount of shuttles and also try to make parking affordable. There is a parking structure going up behind Navy ROTC. Is that going to be for us?
DL: What is affordable in your eyes?
LC: When you pay for a
parking permit it is usually for a semester or a year. Something that would be reasonable for a year in my eyes would be $200 or $250 for a year. But then again, we would have to work with parking and transportation to see what they feel is necessary.
DL: Both you and your opponent have talked about security.
LC: I agree about educating people about the services that are already here, however the other problem is the surrounding area in Albuquerque. We need to work with the city of Albuquerque and also the surrounding neighborhoods. I believe in each neighborhood there is a little coalition — we need to work with them to improve the area around us then we can also move to educate, increase lighting, increase call boxes and the amount of patrols.
DL: Working with the city of Albuquerque and cleaning up the surrounding area seems to be out of the scope for an ASUNM president.
LC: That is why we would appeal to the administration. That is why we have that administration to help us out. And as a student body, why can’t we reach out to the city government a little bit? If anything, they just need to increase the amount of patrols around campus.
DL: What are some of the largest differences between you and your opponent David Conway? He mentioned that he has more experience on the executive side and has more access in administration.
LC: I have worked with administrators on certain issues, but I am not as close with them, which I
believe is one of my strong points. If they tell me they can’t do something, I’ll ask them why we can’t do this. I will be persistent but at the same time I am not going to be buddy-buddy with the administrators. I will take into consideration the best interest of the student in every aspect. Bringing someone new to the plate, is, I believe, a really good stance for the students, because they are not used to (me). (The administration can’t say) “Well we have worked with him before so we know basically how to play him. We know his weak spots.” With me, they don’t really know me. And I am someone who will stand up and be the voice of the students and what is right and wrong.
