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Members of the student movement Our UNM demanded more student inclusion on administrative decisions, advocated for greater transparency and insisted on increased accountability of administration and student government.
Our UNM co-founder Manuel Lopez said the group has two lists of demands, one for Associated Students of the University of New Mexico and a second for administration. Friday’s conference addressed the thirteen demands for administration.
One of the demands of their movement is that the Office of Equal Opportunity report directly to the University president and not to the Legal Council, as it does now, Lopez said.
“The Legal Council is the University’s lawyer, they are interested in protecting the University’s interests, legal interest,” he said. “Putting the place that you go to file a grievance or discrimination complaint against the University under this group, we think that’s a conflict of interest.”
Claudia Mitchell, one of the movement’s co-founders, said Frank is shifting the powers of the Student Fee Review Board in order to support athletics and take students’ voices out of the matter. Another one of Our UNM’s demands is that Frank publicly apologize and postpone his decision to take Athletics and University Libraries away from the SFRB.
“We want President Frank to acknowledge his lies,” Mitchell said. “We want the original promise to uphold and delay the decision until November. We want him to publicly apologize to the student body.”
Mitchell next spoke about the Early Start Program at UNM, a program that sets high school students with lower grades and ACT scores on a track to begin classes a summer early. The program is not set up in a holistic fashion, nor is it funded by the University, she said.
Our UNM demands that the Early Start program either be fully funded or abolished because it puts too harsh of an economic strain on students, she said.
Virginia Necochea, a graduate student and member of Our UNM, said another demand of the movement is to examine changes made to the Bridge Scholarship and to revert it back to a state similar to where it was.
“Drastic changes suddenly were made to a scholarship that is so important to students across communities in our state,” she said. “These changes to the Bridge Scholarship are in effect. As of now, in order to be able to obtain the Bridge Scholarship a student must have a 23 ACT score, and a GPA of a 3.0.”
in the past, a student needed only a 2.5 GPA and an ACT score requirement did not exist, she said.
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Necochea also said the Lottery Scholarship has become a scholarship for students with financial stability, and that it must be reexamined. She said that in general, the University needs to have more needs-based scholarships, and that it now has a disproportionate number of merit-based scholarships.
“Over the years, unfortunately, the Lottery Scholarship has become a scholarship to benefit privileged students,” Necochea said, “If you look at the numbers, students whose parents make over $90,000 a year, over $150,000 a year, over $300,000 a year, are the ones that serve to stand the most benefit.”
Other demands included an increase of the University’s minimum wage, a greater diversity of faculty and staff, greater funding for ethnic centers, discrimination training for all university advisors, a tuition that is manageable and equal across departments, budget transparency from ASUNM and administration, more personalized graduation plans and greater inclusion of UNM students in University decisions.
Lopez said the movement is still waiting for responses to the letters they delivered to both ASUNM President Isaac Romero and UNM President Robert Frank.
