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With the solvency issue still looming over the Lottery Scholarship, the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico continues to ask students for suggestions about how to ensure the scholarship’s long-term survival.
ASUNM will hold a Lottery Scholarship summit Saturday morning at 9:30 in the Student Union Building.
ASUNM President Isaac Romero said the student government decided to organize the summit to keep the students up to date with the Lottery’s status. He said the summit will serve as a forum for students.
“It’s important to keep the conversation going,” he said. “This would be a good event before anything is due. That way we could have a conversation and get students involved from around the state to make it more student-driven than anything else.”
Romero said he started planning the summit when he was campaigning during last semester’s ASUNM elections. He said that through the summit, he will continue the previous ASUNM administration’s initiatives aimed at preserving the Lottery Scholarship.
The Scholarship is slated to run out of funding for full-time awards for all students in July.
ASUNM hosted a similar summit in November “to come up with a list of three solutions that are equitable and actually work for solvency,” Romero said. He said students statewide would be greatly affected if the Lottery vanished.
“It’s not just a UNM issue,” he said. “It’s an issue around the state. But at UNM, specifically, we have the highest number of students who have the Lottery Scholarship in the state.”
Romero said he invited student governments from other universities in New Mexico, such as New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Institute of Technology, to participate in the summit.
But he said student officials still don’t have a concrete solution in mind.
“We’re trying to make sure to keep an open mind and not to narrow ourselves or cut ourselves out,” he said. “I think it’s a conversation that we need to be having with students around the state. We are the ones who are affected so we should have a say on how this proceeds.”
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Devont’e Watson, executive director for governmental affairs at ASUNM, said state government officials will also be present at the event. He also said it is critical for students to find a solution on this issue as soon as possible.
“In the next year, we’re projected to have a deficit in the fund, which would require some action, or else some people would not get it,” he said. “This year is the year that we wanted to ignite a unified proposal with the Legislature with regard to solvency of the Lottery Scholarship.”
Watson said ASUNM started organizing the event during the summer. He said UNM’s Office of Government Relations provided funds to ASUNM for the summit.
Solutions that might be discussed in the summit include making the Lottery more needs-based or more merit-based, Watson said. But he said that making the scholarship needs-based would disadvantage students with no Social Security numbers because they don’t qualify for federal student aid.
Still, Watson said students will strive to come up with a solid solution through the event.
“First it has to be agreed upon all of the student governments,” he said. “Immediately after the summit, there’s going to be an executive meeting of the student governments that are there. The intent of that is to develop a draft solution.”
Romero said beyond the summit, ASUNM is currently working with a Lottery-centered “work group” in the Legislature, which involves government officials, to explore how they could preserve the scholarship. He said the group has already met twice this year, and will meet again in October.
And ASUNM will continue to search for solutions for the Lottery’s solvency, Romero said.
“We just want to make sure students have access to the education they deserve,” he said.
