Editor,
In a recent letter to the Daily Lobo, Randi Beck wrote that a “successful student protest” regarding budgetary matters was practically unknown as far as she knew.
Well, not exactly …
As a graduate student at UNM during 1987-89, I participated in a movement that culminated in the occupation of Scholes Hall. The April 1989 uprising came after a regents’ meeting where students delivered impassioned testimony against a $100 tuition increase.
Students recounted how they juggled jobs, classes and children. In an age of diminishing financial aid, some told how they stripped, peddled drugs or sold their blood plasma to make ends meet.
Plopped down in stone-faced silence, the regents did not respond to students’ concerns. By unanimous vote, they approved a 7.9 percent tuition hike. The regents included former astronaut and Eastern Airlines Chairman Frank Borman, nuclear pharmacist Robert Sanchez, Los Alamos National Laboratories Director Sig Hecker, car dealer Ken Johns and Colleen Maloof of Coors beer distribution fame.
Outraged students took over President Gerald May’s office, settling in for a sleep-in that lasted nearly two weeks in the rechristened “Solidarity Hall.”
The NAACP, Southwest Organizing Project, LULAC and countless others supported the struggle. The Rev. Jesse Jackson sent a message of support.
Although the regents held firm, the protest encouraged UNM’s managers to establish a low-income student grant for several years before it disappeared.
The Scholes Hall occupation did not come out of thin air.
Students and community members had organized around the mismanagement of KUNM, minority retention and recruitment, escalating tuition hikes and other issues. A 1988 rally organized by the All Campus Committee for Educational Survival (ACCES) drew about 1,000 people.
You will find no mention of the above events in official UNM histories.
“For several years, we have witnessed continuous layoffs, payoffs and scandals at the University of New Mexico,” the Scholes Hall occupiers said in a statement. “These problems indicate a lack of accountability on the part of the UNM Board of Regents and the administration …”
Sound familiar?
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Some ridiculed the Scholes Hall occupiers as silly slackers grumbling over a measly $100. Yet the protesters were clear that the battle wasn’t about a one-time increase, but involved the ability of low-income students and students of color to access higher education.
History has vindicated the protest.
In 1976, UNM resident undergraduates paid $260 per semester for tuition. Next semester, they will pay $2,904.60. If the minimum wage had kept pace with rising tuition costs, student workers should now earn about $25 per hour.
But in 2011, even part-time jobs are a scarce commodity and Pell grants are threatened by the budget axe. The Lottery Scholarship funds are expected to dry up in 2014 or 2015, according to the state Legislative Finance Committee. A Daily Lobo poll revealed that about one-third of respondents were already more than $20,000 in educational debt.
Is debt serfdom the fate of future graduates?
In the spirit of 1989, only a massive outcry by students, UNM staff and community members will assure that higher education is affordable and accessible to all.
Kent Paterson,
UNM alumnus
