The UNM Student Fee Review Board is holding an open forum this week in the SUB Atrium, providing an opportunity for students to give feedback on the work of 31 different University bodies that have applied for student fee dollars for the 2016-17 fiscal year.
The next and final phase of the forum will be held Tuesday from noon to 1 p.m.
The board has received requests totaling more than $19 million, SFRB officials said. The funding requests include about $585,000 for one-time applications, and about $18.5 million under recurring applications. The board will deliberate on the requests this weekend in preparation for submitting their preliminary recommendations to the Budget Leadership Team in mid-November, according to the SFRB’s webpage.
Nathan Lihte, deputy chief of staff at GPSA, said that the 31 student organizations that ranged from El Centro to Popejoy Hall to UNM Athletics presented their proposals to the board several weeks ago.
“Students’ fees pay for these programs or parts of these programs,” he said. "Today’s forum was arranged just to get feedback from students who utilize these organizations and give them the opportunity to advocate on behalf of those organizations to the board."
He said the forum was a success, as far as reaching out to the student body went.
“We had a very large turnout,” Lihte said. "We took the whole hour and asked students to be more concise because we wanted to get everybody in. There were a lot of people interested in speaking on behalf of the wide variety of organizations."
Eli Cuna, a public administration graduate student, advocated on behalf of the Dream Team, a student-led coalition for undocumented students by undocumented students.
“Mainly, we are here to support PNMDC, the project for graduate students of color,” she said. "They help us develop our own documents and provide mentoring for students who come from different backgrounds, undocumented and dreamers."
She said she also talked on behalf of the Community Engagement Center, which has helped undocumented students develop a curriculum for building their leadership skills, she said.
“This is an extraordinary space for undocumented students where students know and understand their immigration status and feel empowered,” Cuna said. “Last, but not least, I advocated for El Centro de la Raza. It is a place where people understand our background and our culture and provide us the resources to navigate different issues.”
Kyle Biederwolf, a junior business major, was also at the forum, representing the Student Union Building Board.
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“What I want to come through to the SFRB was kind of how beneficial the increase in fees for the Student Union Building would be. Like I said up there … the first week alone for the SUB itself, we had around 75,000 students come through these doors. That is an increase by a lot from last year,” he said. “And then, every week constantly we have around 60 to 65,000 students come through these doors. So obviously, this affects students every day.”
He said the SUB is a central point of the University, and everyone can use its facilities.
“We just want to improve this building as much as we can,” he said.
The Global Education Office also generated an email on Sunday requesting students to talk on its behalf at the forum.
According to the email, the Global Education Office (GEO) has requested funding again this year from UNM student fees to support GEO programs including workshops, social activities, the Lobo Friend buddy program, the International Service Corps and orientation activities.
“If you appreciate these GEO services and you want to help us in our efforts to continue to receive funding for these important programs for you, please consider coming and talking about how these programs have been helpful to you at one of the public forums in the SUB Atrium tomorrow (Monday) and Tuesday,” according to the email.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
