Students have a chance to elect UNM’s future undergraduate and graduate student leaders during the ASUNM and GPSA elections, but few actually vote. Since 2008, no more than 11 percent of main campus undergraduate students voted in ASUNM spring elections, according to data from ASUNM Elections Adviser Debbie Morris.
UNM Provost Suzanne Ortega will not return to her post in the fall. Ortega’s contract is up for renewal this summer, but she accepted a job offer back east instead of renewing her contract, University President David Schmidly said in his Monday morning e-mail. “We’ll be able to share more about it as the details are finalized, but know that it is a wonderful opportunity, and no one is more deserving of it,” Schmidly wrote.
Michael Thorning announced Monday that he is dropping out of the ASUNM presidential race, three weeks after resigning from his high-ranking position in the president’s cabinet. The former chief-of-staff declared March 8 he’d run against Attorney General Jaymie Roybal, and he said ASUNM president Laz Cardenas cut his chief-of-staff duties in half three days later. “I think I got the sense that it was either going to become a hostile work environment or I wasn’t going to be working there,” Thorning said.
Jaymie Roybal, Now Slate Daily Lobo: Tell me about the slate that you helped create and its platforms. Jaymie Roybal: We wanted the platforms we’ve developed to be straight, have really broad issues — and then we tried to generalize them.
UNM head coach Steve Alford, who in the past hinted that his UNM stay was contingent on continued administrative support, denied reports that he may leave UNM to fill Missouri’s head coaching vacancy.
More than 300 people celebrated labor activist Cesar Chavez’s efforts Saturday. Supporters marched through the downtown Barelas neighborhood to the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Michael Thorning, New Day Slate Daily Lobo: What is your campaign focused on? Michael Thorning: We want to start a new era where we ask, “How are we reinvesting in students?” We want to make people more competitive in the job market.
by Shaun Griswold shaun24@unm.edu UNM community members will remember student Beatrice Dominguez-Meiers’ life at a memorial service Saturday morning. Her son, James Meiers, said his mother was dedicated to serving people until the very end. “It wasn’t until the last couple of months where she really got so sick that she couldn’t help people,” he said.
Students may have to wait nearly three months to get an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis and prescription from Student Health and Counseling.
The Athletics Department has almost four times more advisers per student than UNM undergraduate degree-granting colleges, and athletes enjoy access to clinical psychologists, learning specialists and student services.
UNM Battle of the Bands is not a win-at-all-costs affair, but an avenue for creating alliances. The battle showcases up-and-coming students who have less performance opportunities than established bands, said Bryan Jurus, director of Student Special Events.
UNMH reviewed its security policy after a Jan. 4 shooting incident, but the hospital didn’t make changes to its policy.
Someday, UNM Professor Derek Hamilton hopes to eliminate fetal alcohol syndrome. Using lab rats for his research, Hamilton studies the effects of prenatal ethanol consumption because many children suffer with a moderate version of FAS that can go undetected for years. “What you might see in a textbook about fetal alcohol syndrome, that’s full-blown FAS, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
In spring 1953, 600 people at the site and another 15 million television viewers watched an atomic bomb explode in the Mojave Desert. UNLV professor Andrew Kirk said scientists coordinated the atomic explosions to demonstrate the eerie effects on a house and the mannequins set up inside it. In the UNM alumnus’ lecture, “Doomtown: Picturing Home on the Nevada Test Site,” Kirk said the test site was thought to be nothing more than an empty space in Nevada, but in reality, hundreds of thousands lived there, including the Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes. “The West is a complicated place,” Kirk said. “What appeared to be blank spots are full of history. Empty landscapes, supposed waste lands, are loaded with human history of forgotten people and forgotten stories.” The day of the demonstration, Native American tribes protested at the site’s gate, but the scientists proceeded.
Ever since he was young, Jake Wellman was groomed for responsibility — and that doesn’t seem to be changing. The recently appointed student regent said having a seat on the board gives him a chance to be a “servant leader.” He said he was a Boy Scout in middle school, and that experience motivated him to take on leadership roles. “I learned the rewards of helping other people and doing a job that I had to get done well,” he said.
Patricia Caballero, GPSA Presidential Candidate, Community and Regional Planning Daily Lobo: What do you see as the biggest issues facing the graduate community? Patricia Caballero: How do we come together as a unified body, how do we identify goals and priorities, and how do we go after them strategically?
UNM regents spent eight hours listening and discussing, but not approving, budget proposals during Monday’s budget summit. The regents heard University members discuss tuition increases, department decreases and consolidation, instructor salaries and student services.
Organizers called for “emergency” protests in cities across the country to oppose the recent bombings in Libya, and Albuquerque was no exception. About a dozen members of the local chapter of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) met in front of the UNM Bookstore for Saturday’s protest.
A former general manager at KNME filed a lawsuit last week claiming the University terminated her for asking too many questions about why the station was missing more than $4 million. The plaintiff, Joanne Bachmann, claims that starting in 1992 UNM funneled millions of dollars from federal agencies and donors intended for the public TV station.
DL: What do you see as the biggest issues facing the graduate community? JD: One of my biggest concerns is about the direction of the University and what our focus is going to be.
Solutions by The State News
