Michael Thorning, New Day Slate
Daily Lobo: What is your campaign focused on?
Michael Thorning: We want to start a new era where we ask, “How are we reinvesting in students?” We want to make people more competitive in the job market. It’s a student-focused approach.
DL: What are some platforms you and your slate are promoting?
MT: Competitiveness — One of the important things going forward will be (how) American Campus Communities becomes as part of the community. We want to make decisions that are good for students, not just students who will be living in the ACC property, but also students here. Another part of competitiveness is tuition. Anyone running this year will tell you tuition needs to be kept low. We will work with administration to advocate for no increases in tuition. We want them to give us a forecasting plan. Students should be able to know what their tuition will cost them in year four.
Wellness — … It’s incumbent upon the University to institute a safe-ride program. It’s something that NMSU provides. It’s something that a number of different peer institutions provide. I don’t want students to have to be in that position of driving drunk.
Openness — I think ASUNM has done an embarrassingly poor job communicating with students. It’s more about just staying connected with students. We’re going to be transparent about what we’re doing. New Day is about ASUNM Senate web-casting every Senate meeting that they have and video archiving them. New Day is about having a web app that sends info out to students who have the app.
DL: How are you going to work with the administration to advocate for students?
MT: The most important argument, and the one it can’t give up on, is that, yeah, it’s tough for the University, but it’s tougher on students. We need to be solving this issue now for students. A graduate student told me that UNM students have one of the highest debt loads when they leave their University. That’s not an answer we can accept here at UNM, considering we are a state that has one of the highest poverty levels. If you leave with $50,000 in debt, are you really competitive when you go out in the job market?
DL: What about your involvement at UNM in the past makes you qualified for ASUNM president?
MT: I have had the honor of serving on student-housing advisement. I serve on the Student Publications Board. I served on the Student Fee Review Board. It takes patience and negotiation. I’ve served as ASUNM Chief of Staff, so I was there alongside making decisions. I’ve been lobbying in Santa Fe and in front of the Board of Regents. I’m currently the president of the SUB Board. My career, other than my education, has been about serving students.
DL: What are you going to do to improve communications and relations with GPSA?
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MT: I’ve been one of the people who have been at the forefront of ASUNM/GPSA relations in this past year. We had some rough patches with them at the SFRB and a number of different issues on campus. I served as that go-between, the person who would meet diplomatically with GPSA. And if you asked them at GPSA, they would tell you I’ve always been willing to talk to them. Good policy is not about winning what you want; it’s about everyone leaving at the end of the day happy. It takes compromise.
