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Opinion

Letter: Special session Legislature must reconsider education funds

June 15

On June 8, the New Mexico Legislature was called back into a special session to reconsider passing the $295 million capital outlay bill that died in the final days of the 2015 legislative session. The special session requires that lawmakers return to Santa Fe to reconsider spending on capital projects critical to higher education and communities throughout rural New Mexico. Not only does capital outlay provide improvements to public facilities in local communities, but it also provides much-needed jobs through the construction and improvements of facilities in a state that currently ranks 48th in job growth. The special session is an opportunity to restore some of the funding request made my colleges and universities throughout New Mexico. Gov. Susana Martinez and House Republicans had proposed a 44 percent cut to institutions of higher education throughout the state during the 60-day regular session — now is the time to restore these cuts. Some of those cuts included building and infrastructure improvement such as roof improvements to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, a tech center at UNM Gallup, and improvements to UNM’s Health Education Building. Smaller institutions critical to the state mission of higher education, such as Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, also depend on capital improvement funds to maintain buildings, and have requested $500,000 to upgrade a fire alarm system to be in compliance with fire regulations.

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Sports

Baseball: Players forego senior seasons for MLB draft

Liam Cary-Eaves | June 15

ollowing the MLB draft, New Mexico will head into the offseason looking to fill some major holes in their lineup and on their coaching staff. UNM’s junior starting pitcher Toller Boardman and junior infielder Sam Haggerty will test their luck in the professional baseball realm, forgoing each of their senior seasons as Lobos. Boardman was selected in the 22nd round (670th overall) by the Detroit Tigers, while Haggerty was selected by the Cleveland Indians as a 24th rounder (724th overall). Head coach Ray Birmingham was unavailable for comment, but he said in a statement that the program he runs at UNM sets out to get student-athletes into the major leagues.

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Sports

Track & Field: Lobo athletes attain All-American honors

Staff Report | June 15

New Mexico sent four athletes to the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon this past weekend, all of whom reached the All-American plateau for the first time in school history. Senior pole vaulter Logan Pflibsen set the bar high for UNM’s track and field program after tying for a sixth-place finish in his final collegiate meet. Pflibsen’s personal-best 17 feet, 18 ½ inches breached the top eight spots of the 24 athletes. Pflibsen is only the third pole vaulter in school history to finish as an All-American.

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News

LGBT edition: Resource center seeks campus-wide Safe Zones

Sayyed Shah | June 8

The LGBTQ Resource Center is arranging Safe Zone trainings across UNM campus to make the University more welcoming for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. The resource center will offer cultural competency workshops to build allies who recognize homophobia and stand up against it, said Alma Rosa Silva-Banuelos, director of the LQBTQ Resource Center. “Providing the Safe Zone trainings has been part of our mission to make sure this campus is welcoming and safe for LGBTQ-identified students,” she said. “We really want our students to be able to go to school and not worry about all the other issues that they face when they are in higher education or at college.”

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News

LGBT edition: Prof. studies relationship between race, sexuality

Matthew Reisen | June 8

Shinsuke Eguchi, an assistant professor of communication, said he approaches teaching as a way to practice his culture, gender, sexuality and communication research. “I am strongly devoted to developing an academic advising relationship between students and me,” Eguchi said. “By doing so, my goal is to assist students to become active members of an intellectual community and to develop critical, creative, transformative knowledge that is relevant for today’s globalized, intercultural communication contexts.” Originally from Tokyo, Eguchi came to the United States in 2001 to attend an undergraduate program in California. He started as a theatre arts major and wanted to be an actor, but said he fell in love with communication studies.

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Culture

LGBT edition: Initiative focuses on preferred names

Skylar Griego | June 8

What’s your name? This is the question the University’s LGBTQ Resource Center is addressing with their latest goal, the preferred name initiative. The initiative is to allow transgender students to use preferred names, rather than legal names, in the academic setting, including on students’ Lobo IDs.

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Culture

LGBT edition: Pride parades represent more than just fun

Imani Lambert | June 8

Despite the large numbers that attend pride parades, the history behind them doesn’t seem to be well-understood by the general populace. Curtison Badonie, a senior biology major, said ‘pride’ means having acceptance of who an individual is, no matter what. Pride focuses on LGBTQ community representation through art and other forms of expression, regardless of how society treats them. Badonie said he learned more about activists who were underrepresented than prominent figures such as Harvey Milk.

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Opinion

LGBT edition column: How many strikes until everyone's out?

Thomas Romero-Salas | June 8

Not long ago, the idea of a gay athlete was foreign to many. Yes, there had been athletes who ‘came out’ after their playing days were over, but their stories were relegated to the back pages of the newspapers, or not talked about at all. That long-held stance has since fallen to the wayside with Jason Collins and Michael Sam breaking barriers by coming out as gay during their careers. Collins became the first openly gay active NBA player when he took to the court for the Brooklyn Nets in 2014. Sam was the first openly gay player to be chosen in the NFL draft when St. Louis selected him with the 294th pick just last year.

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Culture

LGBT edition: 10 amazing movies to watch for Pride 2015

Nathan Reynolds | June 8

In honor of Pride 2015, here is a list of some of the most incredible, but often forgotten, LGBT films in history.

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Culture

Creativity festival showcases local art

Skylar Griego | June 1

On Saturday, Civic Plaza Presents hosted a ‘creativity festival’ titled Creative 505, a showcase at which Albuquerque locals and tourists alike experienced local culture at Civic Plaza. Creative 505 was a collaborative, family-friendly event among local organizations and businesses to showcase Albuquerque’s film, theater, art, music, tech and other communities. The event provided a variety of entertainment options, including live music and other performances, interactive informational booths, vendors, food trucks, face painting and chalk art. There were also more formal options, such as business demonstrations and installations.

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Sports

UNM teams meet academic standards mark

Staff Report | June 1

All 21 New Mexico athletics programs hit the required mark of 930 in the NCAA Academic Progress Report. APR is designed to penalize teams that are not meeting the required academic standards set by the NCAA. None of UNM’s teams are in danger of receiving a penalty. Four UNM athletics programs had four-year scores of a perfect 1,000: women’s tennis, men’s tennis, women’s cross country and women’s golf. Last week, all of those programs were recognized by the NCAA for being in the top 10 percent of a particular sport in APR.

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Sports

Baseball: Team injuries plagued season

Thomas Romero-Salas | June 1

A string of injuries derailed New Mexico’s chances of winning another Mountain West baseball championship. Over the course of the season, the Lobos saw six of their nine starting players miss time due to injuries. The pitching staff wasn’t immune to the injury bug either, as UNM lost two starters — sophomore Conner Rusch and senior Colton Thomson — during the year. The Lobos were able to endure the losses, but finished in fourth place in the Mountain West at the end of the regular season. UNM’s finish is its lowest since the 2011 season, when it placed sixth.

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Sports

Sports briefs for June 1, 2015

Thomas Romero-Salas | June 1

Sports Briefs Track and Field New Mexico will send four athletes to the NCAA Championships after they qualified for the meet at the 2015 NCAA West Preliminary in Austin, Texas this past weekend. Peter Callahan, Logan Pflibsen, Callie Thackery and Alice Wright will represent the Lobos at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon this month.

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Culture

Exchange system looks to empower through books

Kevin Haaf | June 1

Motivated by a desire to help people enrich their lives through literacy and education, local organization Zombie Bar Krawl is launching a free exchange library system called 1000 Paper Brainz. Chelsea McBride, founder of 1000 Paper Brainz, said the name was originally an idea for an art project based on the Japanese novel “A Thousand Paper Cranes,” which is founded on the legend suggesting that if one folds 1,000 origami cranes, he or she will be granted a wish. “I’m an avid book reader and lover. I’m always trying to think of ways to convince everybody to read,” she said. “I took the idea to my Albuquerque Bar Krawl Krew (the local chapter of Zombie Bar Krawl), and they loved it.”

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Culture

Review: French film similar to Helen Keller story

Nathan Reynolds | June 1

Feeling, hearing, speaking: the often intense, sometimes intimate relationship between the senses and interpersonal communication. These are the elements that make “Marie’s Story,” the new film by Jean-Pierre Améris, a unique variation on the common subject of communication. “Marie’s Story” centers on a French monastery — a school for the deaf — and a nun named Soeur Marguerette, played by Isabelle Carré. Her sole mission is to teach Marie, a young, blind and deaf girl portrayed by Ariana Rivoire, how to communicate and eventually find pleasure in a world outside her own perception. The story is similar to that of Helen Keller, which has been dramatized as “The Miracle Worker” in English several times. The concept is well-trod, and it feels that way in the film. The two primary characters go through little development. Marguerette starts out as a woman with something missing from her life and trying to fill the void with teaching Marie. She then discovers a newness and excitement about the world through her own eyes in the process.

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News

Website puts UNM law school in nation's top 20

Jyllian Roach | June 1

The UNM School of Law has made its way onto a list of the top 20 law schools in the country. Above the Law ranked the top 50 law schools, looking specifically at the cost, amount of debt and quality law jobs graduates had after their time at each school, according to the legal trade website. “Forty percent of 2014 law graduates did not secure a job in the law,” surveyors said on abovethelaw.com. “We believe the ATL Top 50 gives prospective law students a way to analyze schools using metrics that actually matter.”

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News

UNM group raise funds for Nepal

Matthew Reisen | June 1

A collaboration between groups at UNM is finding ways to bring assistance to those affected by the recent earthquakes in Nepal, the most recent endeavor being Nepal Film Night, which aimed at raising money and awareness for the crisis. Nepal Film Night, presented by UNM4Nepal in collaboration with Nepal Study Center, is just one of the fundraising efforts put together by the student group, said Jen Van Osdel, President of UNM4Nepal. Van Osdel, who has been with the group since its beginning, said it was heartwarming to see the big turnout for Nepal Film Night, which showed the first Nepalese film to be nominated for an Academy Award, and to see “the way that the UNM community has rallied behind Nepali students and faculty in their time of grief.” About 50 students, along with their friends and family members, attended the event.

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News

Ophthalmologists look into diabetics' blindness

Sayyed Shah | June 1

A UNM research team is working to find molecules that cause retinal damage in diabetic patients, and is developing ways to stop those molecules from entering the retina. Following experiments on diabetic mice, the researchers found there were a lot of white blood cells infiltrating the retinal vessels, said Arup Das, chief of the Division of Ophthalmology in the UNM Department of Surgery. The researchers think the molecules they found during their experiments on animals could also be found in humans. The drugs that are presently used for treatment of blood leakage in the eyes are called anti-VEGF drugs that are directly injected into the eye, Das said.

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Culture

Review: 'Fury Road' does action right

Nathan Reynolds | May 26

In “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the latest addition to the groundbreaking post-apocalyptic film series directed by George Miller, Mad Max describes himself as “a man reduced to a single instant.” “Mad Max: Fury Road” is very much a film obsessed with the instant: particularly frantic instants of fire, twisting metal, and endless sand. Miller has taken the Mad Max concept and not only expanded on the world of the story, but pushed the elements that made the earlier movies popular as far as he could. The plot of “Fury Road” revolves around Max, played by Tom Hardy, and Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa as they attempt to steal the wives and war rig of the tyrannical warlord Immortan Joe, played by Hugh Keays Byrne, who also played the villain in the original Mad Max. Immortan Joe, not too happy about theft of his wives, sets out after the heroes with a whole party of white-painted warriors on an array of deadly vehicular monstrosities. The breakneck narrative of “Fury Road” takes place almost entirely in, on and around these constructions — particularly the war rig, a giant semi equipped with armored hatchbacks and machine guns.

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Sports

Men's soccer: High expectations accompany Brazilian recruit

Isabel Gonzalez | May 26

The UNM men’s soccer team debuted a new player this spring, and his name is Yuri Domiciano. Domiciano, a 6-foot defender from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is one of the six members of the 2015 recruiting class announced by the UNM men’s soccer program earlier this year. He arrived to the United States in 2012 and spent two years at Iowa Western, a junior college. In 2014 he was named a Junior College All-American and helped his team advance to the national semifinals by holding opponents to just .45 goals per game.