While students paid $486.49 in student fees this year to support on-campus services, many of them are underused.
The Outdoor and Bike Shop
The Outdoor and Bike Shop, located near the east entrance to Johnson Gym, offers more than bike tune-ups, but employee Eric Peterson said most services are widely underused.
“When we do a daily closeout at the end of the day, 70 percent of what was made that day was made due to bike-related things and very rarely anything else,” Peterson said.
Students paid $29.42 in student fees this year to subsidize the cost of equipment rentals, according to Student Fee Review Board reports.
The nonprofit shop offers rentals including tents, snowboards and cross country skis, but the shop’s most unused rental service is the rock-climbing gear. Johnson Center has a rock climbing wall Peterson said is often out of use.
“The University does have a climbing wall, but it isn’t exactly open to the public,” he said. “It is in like this little hidden dungeon and is always locked due to liability reasons. That is something UNM lacks in comparison to other large universities. We have the equipment, but no one ever uses it,”
Student Health and Counseling Center
This year students paid $191.83 in fees to the Student Health and Counseling Center, more than double what they paid to any other single organization.
SHAC Director Beverly Kloeppel said many of the services are underused. Kloeppel said the center is trying to increase student awareness of services, including travel and podiatry clinics, massage therapy and acupuncture services.
Kloeppel said one way the center tries to ensure that student fees support services students use is by conducting a survey of students, and running once-a-week programs based on what students request in the surveys.
“We recently added an acupuncture clinic on Friday mornings. That is something students often do not think about, and we also have massage therapy,” Kloeppel said.
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SHAC services are offered at reduced rates because they are subsidized by student fees. Kloeppel said the subsidy amount varies, depending on the service.
“Some services rely more on the student fee component, while other services aren’t as subsidized,” she said. “For example, our counseling services … the first two visits are completely subsidized by student fees because we want to encourage students to come in early for those kinds of issues.”
Kloeppel said that at the travel clinic, students can get the shots they need to protect themselves from diseases when they go abroad.
“(This clinic is) for people who are traveling to make sure they get proper advice and the proper vaccinations for the areas they are going to,” she said.
Security Services
UNM’s Police Department is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to respond to security issues, and while the department isn’t funded by student fees, it still offers students several free services.
UNM Security Supervisor Rosemary Melendrez said one of the most underused services is the escort program. The program offers students driving and walking escorts to anywhere on campus, but the service only provided 33 escorts in January of this year.
UNMPD also offers students jump-starts and tire changes for their cars free of charge.
“I do not think (students) really know about the tire changes and the jump-starts, we only average about 40 jump-starts a month, and even fewer tire changes,” Melendrez said.
