The Daily Lobo sat down with candidates from both slates running for ASUNM senator positions, Voice and Make Your Mark, to ask what they plan to do if elected to the Senate.
What programs would you increase support for?
-Voice
Caroline Muraida: “We are looking at creating better channels of communication between student organizations like Veterans Affairs and LGBTQ …to better represent students.”
Brandon Meyers: “We are looking at starting off with bill and resolution workshops… that are incorporated in the budget process. Every student organization that requests funding has to go through the budget process, so I would like to incorporate a segment where we discuss mechanisms for expressing our voice, how to change things in ASUNM, showing organizations how to write legislation.”
-Make Your Mark
Joe Stevens: “As a legislator, I have to let organizations focus on what they know. The Veterans Affairs association knows about veterans affairs, I’m not going to say I know better. It’s most important for senators to get done what organizations want to see done. We need more accountability from senators to their organizations and just getting them to be a force in those various organizations.”
Anthony Santistevan: “We want to make sure that the great outreach that ASUNM has had is continued. We want to continue support Howl-Raisers, which is a club where you get points for attending athletic events…and can get things like T-shirts for participating…but we want to expand this to all social events on campus…to increase student participation.”
In these harsh economic times, there isn’t enough funding to go around at the University. What programs would you cut, or decrease ASUNM’s involvement in?
-Voice
Muraida: “Our approach to the economic climate isn’t one that is solely centered on cutting things. Budget cuts are going to happen in all departments all across campus. Looking toward the future, what we want to focus on is when we are spending money, how are we spending this money? For instance the infrastructure of the University, we know that ASUNM does not directly fund it, but we know that ASUNM has a voice…we can say, ‘Hey if you are building a new structure, make sure it’s sustainable.’”
Meyers: “We are looking at the tuition credit, and it is completely within reach to cut that …what we want to see is actively working with institutions all across New Mexico to do that. We are already working with GPSA to write joint legislation on that.”
-Make Your Mark
Stevens: “I haven’t looked at the actual budget, so I don’t want to say that I want to cut anything at this point. What I would like to speak on is what I would like to improve. We would like to expand ELL (Emerging Lobo Leaders, a program designed to involve incoming freshmen in ASUNM government).”
Santistevan: “We need to see what is working on campus. We have done such a great job with outreach and we want to continue to do that work … One of my favorite organizations is Student Special Events, and I want to continue that. Students want to be involved with their campus and involved in the University.”
How is your slate different than the slate you are running against?
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
-Voice
Meyers: “What we provide is extreme diversity. We have two engineering majors, we have a member of (Queer Straight Alliance) and a student that is non-traditional — she is a mom — and we have an RA. When you start putting all these things together, my thought from day one is that we are more representative … when considering legislation their (the senators on the ‘Voice’ slate) first thought is going to be, ‘how does that affect my constituents?’”
-Make Your Mark
Santistevan: “There are a lot of similarities, but the biggest difference I can see is that we started early. We have spoken to over 30 student organizations, we launched the page at least a month ago and we have been working with student organizations and planning our platform.”
What experience would you bring to ASUNM that would be beneficial?
-Voice
Muraida: “Each individual has their own unique experience to bring to the slate. As far as experience is concerned I encourage you to check out the bios on our facebook page for all of the student organizations, clubs, and other activities (our slate members are involved in).”
Meyers: “We have three current senators on the slate, Caroline Muraida, myself and Jeff Herrera, and I think that brings a different leadership style.”
-Make Your Mark
Stevens: “We have people involved in Emerging Lobo Leaders, and I wasn’t a part of ASUNM, but I was keeping up on events there. This last summer I worked for Tom Udall … I got a lot of experience writing and implementing legislation and seeing the natural structure of the government and that makes what happens here a lot easier. We have a lot of involvement with student organization groups, for instance Victoria Archuleta founded Net Impact (a student business organization).”
~compiled by Luke Holmen
