Former New Mexico guard Hugh Greenwood will represent Australia in the 2015 World University Games in South Korea this summer, the Australian team announced Wednesday. The Boomers are in Pool C with Lithuania, Finland, Japan, France and Chinese Taipei, and will begin play on July 3.
As summer approaches, homebound local students may be wondering what to do with their newfound free time. One option to consider is ABQ Food Fridays, a weekly event held from May through August, created by Civic Plaza Presents. ABQ Food Fridays is a social gathering held from 4 to 8 p.m. at Civic Plaza where people can eat, drink and experience the week’s music and events for Friday night fun. Damian Lopez-Gaston, director of event services at the Albuquerque Convention Center, said Food Fridays is a pop-up happy hour food-and-beer event designed to get people to start thinking about Civic Plaza in a slightly different way. Last fall, Civic Plaza was awarded one of four place-making grants by Southwest Airlines, Lopez-Gaston said. The purpose of the grant is to make an underused area more important to the city it’s in, he said.
New Mexico’s streak of Mountain West championships came to an end Sunday. The Lobos had won either the MW regular season or tournament title the past four seasons, but that run ended with a 6-4 loss to San Diego State in the title game of the MW tournament in Reno, Nevada. UNM, which finished fourth in the regular season, lost a chance to win the MW tournament title when the Lobos were blown out by the second-seeded Aztecs 11-1. SDSU has now won the last three MW tourney championships.
Service animals are typically trained dogs that assist people who are blind or have a physical disability. However, a new type of service animal has emerged in recent years. Emotional Support Animals are prescribed by a mental health professional for a person who has a mental health diagnosis, according to the National Service Animal Registry. That animal’s presence helps to minimize the symptoms of a person’s diagnosis both at home and in public. Registering a pet as an ESA is a simple process: the pet owner must have a mental health diagnosis, and the animal must be leash trained, follow simple commands and be non-aggressive toward people, according to nsarco.com. If those qualifications are met, the licensure process can be completed online for about $65.
A public service announcement, created by UNM students driven to spur a culture change surrounding sexual assault and other abuse on campus, was released early this month as part of a new campaign dubbed Protect the Pack. The 45-second long PSA shows a diverse group of UNM students, as well as President Bob Frank and other members of University administration, saying “it’s time for a change, of real change,” concerning issues on campus that make it an unsafe environment. The Protect the Pack initiative is the student-led side of LoboRESPECT, an initiative created in September to “combat sexual misconduct on campus, including assaults, domestic violence, dating violence and even stalking,” according to a University press release.
Now that we acknowledge drug-induced psychosis, we should also acknowledge psychosis induced purely by religion. After all, ISIL among the Muslims, the KKK among the Christians, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh among the Hindus are all gangs of violent psychopaths. The problem is that any religion is very clever at broadcasting that it is the corresponding non-believers who have this or that delusion, not they. Take climate change. Well-funded Christian fundamentalists, even in this scientifically advanced country, claim that climate change is delusion. In reality, it is they who are delusional about man-made climate change as fact — the most obvious causative factor to anybody breathing being the plumes of pollution blanketing the sky throughout the thin skin around Earth we call the atmosphere. But self-proclaimed Christian “scientists” get into government and say things like “You only have to reflect God, and you can breathe anything and you will never fall sick.” Then they take their hats off to the likes of the Koch brothers, who toss in more change. Or Christians imagine some “God” to be pulling the strings and sending down lightning with pinpoint accuracy in the manner of laser-guided missiles, and thus effecting climate change, not man.
Some say the city has taken a step forward by giving preferred treatment on city contract bidding to employers who pay women within 10 percent of what they pay their male employees for the same work. So, let me get this straight: if you pay women less than men, you get preferred treatment in city contracts? Am I missing something here?
With the Spring 2015 semester concluded, the New Mexico Daily Lobo has started its weekly printing schedule during the summer months.
Whether he was walking across campus or going to the store to pick up groceries, Matthew Grant took it upon himself to turn everything into an adventure. That kind of confidence — the kind that saw the potential in every situation — was Grant’s most telling trait, said Gage Gutierrez. Gutierrez, a friend of Grant’s since they met each other in Sigma Alpha Epsilon their freshman year, said that poise rubbed off on him and anyone else who knew him. “Hanging out with Matt, you always felt more confident and it always seemed to end in a good time,” Gutierrez said.
UNM will award posthumous degrees to Briana Hillard and Matthew Grant, both of whom died in a car accident on Nov. 20. Briana Hillard started her college career at UNM in August 2011, having graduated from Sandia High School in May earlier that year. “Briana was the third generation of our family to attend UNM; however, no one in our family loved UNM more than our dear daughter, Briana,” said Michael Hillard, Briana’s father and, until recently, a psychology professor at UNM for a quarter century. “She was extremely active in her sorority and participated in numerous campus activities. Her entire adult life, as it turned out, was deeply involved with campus life.”
It took six years of hard work, but one student will graduate with a near-perfect grade point average despite battling against a reading disorder. Khadija Chudnoff, a liberal arts major, said she was diagnosed with the common learning disorder dyslexia when she was in kindergarten. “I used to love telling people I had it because people thought it was a disease, so I’d get sympathy. I would tell my classmates I had dyslexia to try to get attention,” she said. “I liked it at first. I didn’t know that I was so far behind; I thought it was normal to get taken out of class for extra help. Until I was in middle school I didn’t get that I had to do so much extra work.”
“You need to be a doctor,” John Wade said. “You’re crazy. Me, a doctor?” Crystal Arrietta said. “Yeah! You’ve seen the most messed-up people in the world, and you’ve been able to move on from that,” Wade, Arrietta’s co-worker, said. “Don’t you think you can help those people?” This short conversation was one of the major turning points of Arrietta’s life, she said. With the help of family, friends, advisors and professors, Arrietta will graduate Saturday with a bachelor of arts degree in sociology.
osh Martinez is all too familiar with the problems surrounding Northern New Mexico. Martinez, who grew up in Chimayo, had to deal with the drug issue that Rio Arriba County is known for. Rio Arriba County has one of the highest death rates per capita due to drug overdose. However, thanks to his faith and his family, Martinez was never involved with the drug problem that plagues his hometown. Now Martinez will be graduating from UNM for the second time with a master’s degree in public administration.
Learning a new language can be challenging, but attempting to learn a new language while studying at a university more than 1,000 miles away from home is even more so. Like so many other students, Barbara Gomez Aguinaga has a lot of support from her family in Jalisco, Mexico, but that doesn’t make being away from home any easier. Gomez Aguinaga, a political science major who will graduate this semester, said she will be the second person in her family to graduate from college.
I never wanted to be a monster. I never really wanted to be a reviewer. But I just want to say: it’s been a weird gig. I’ve always been a theater person — actor, writer and director, when I’m lucky — but I never thought I would ever take part in one of the most mysterious and maligned occupations around. In the summer of 2010 I was in the first “Will Power! Shakespeare Festival” at the Vortex Theatre. I was asked to talk about it in an interview for the June 14 issue of the Daily Lobo. Incarnations of it still exist online somewhere, including a picture of me standing in a tree.
Many people take four years to complete a college degree. Elaine Lieberman spent 30 years working on hers. After enrolling at UNM at several points throughout her life, Lieberman, a liberal arts major, will graduate Friday with a 4.0 grade point average at 74 years old. She said she decided to persevere toward a degree about six years ago, and has been taking classes since then. She was only able to afford six credit hours each semester.
In 2013, the average age of a UNM student was 25 years old. Verity Bornet, a senior psychology major, defies the average. Verity Bornet will graduate this semester with a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the age of 19. Bornet started figure skating when she was 13. A year later, she opted out of attending high school so she could commit more time to skating. She earned her GED and began working toward her associate’s degree at Santa Fe Community College. Four years later, she is substituting a high school graduation with a college ceremony.
For Matthew Singleton, getting through college was more difficult than it is for most. But he will be the first person in his family to graduate from college. Singleton spent most of his life living in Roswell with his grandparents, and rose out of hardship to receive his degree in secondary education this semester. While Singleton’s father was not around, his mother was in and out of his life.
The photo desk this semester has compiled the stories of people from all walks of life. The images witnessed by our eyes and lenses and presented here serve as a celebration of life; as a means to preserve the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly; and as a means to keep moments captured forever in time. “That is life.”
The beautiful thing about music is you don’t have to understand what a musician is saying to connect with it. Regardless of whether or not lyrics are present, one only has to listen to the melodies, harmonies and beats of a song to feel what the artist is conveying. Of course, it still helps if you speak the language. “Têtu,” Le Vent Du Nord’s latest release, captures its audience with a traditional style unlike any found in today’s popular music. The opening track, “Noce tragique,” has an abrupt beginning that quickly draws you in with a steady beat, a repetitive accordion melody and the strong presence of a hurdy-gurdy. When the lead vocalist begins singing, one will be surprised to hear a voice full of timbre in contrast with the light melody. The music complements him beautifully.
Solutions by The State News
