The Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) at UNM held an open house Wednesday morning, inviting the UNM community for coffee and breakfast while talking face-to-face with anyone in attendance.
After receiving complaints about difficulties locating the office, OEO staff members said they recognized the event as a tremendous opportunity to spread awareness of its whereabouts.
Francie Cordova, director of OEO, said since her appointment in June, 2015, the office has been on a path of transformation. There had been plans to hold an open house for sometime, but the physical office-space was being refurbished with fresh paint and new furniture, she said, although these weren’t the only changes being made around OEO.
“Our office is being restructured completely, with staff, and even just trying to make it look more attractive, a better workspace and a better space for people to come to,” Cordova said. “We wanted to just reach out to the campus during a time when students (are experiencing) high stress. Give chair massages, and have burritos and have an opportunity for them to meet us, and us to meet them.”
Cordova said OEO is often thought of as being far away from most student activity,
“We wanted to be able to bring them to this part of campus, see where we’re at,” she said.
Aside from spreading awareness of the office’s physical location and creating a welcoming aesthetic appeal, Cordova said there have been marked improvements in office staffing.
“(Over the course of about a year) we’ve restructured our staff so that we have a full time Title IX coordinator, a full time clery coordinator, both housed here, a full time director and we’ve hired additional investigators,” she said.
The “general restructuring” of OEO staff is meant to more clearly define office responsibilities, Cordova said, suggesting that since most people access resources and information online, it helps to have distinctive titles for key members of the process.
She said increased identifiability within the office, will hopefully have a “streamlining” effect on processes involving Title IX.
“We’re looking at it from the Civil Rights perspective. When someone suffers discrimination within their workplace, or school setting, it can impact their ability to work or learn. So it’s a super important issue, because if that is going on, then it’s affecting that person, it’s potentially affecting the whole classroom, or the whole work environment,” Cordova said.
The first thing to do when handling issues of this nature is to seek out a resource, be it an investigative one or an advocacy source, she said, “Don’t go at it alone.”
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Luke Moulson, a junior psychology major, said he grew up Title IX as a large presence in his family. Upon realizing the role of OEO, he said he was eager to join their staff and became passionate about the work they do.
Moulson, who was hired around the same time Cordova was appointed said the office has become a much livelier, more efficient and sufficiently-staffed place since then.
“I came here and found out that Title IX was actually on of the things that they covered, and that was something I learned about when I was very young, and I realized a lot of people didn’t know about it,” Moulson said.
There are certain difficulties in resolving the types of issues that are brought forth at OEO, he said.
“It’s really nice to know that, even in some small way as an office assistant, I’m still helping," he said.
