DAILY LOBO new mexico
Student spotlight
tuesday
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February 1, 2011
Students fight to get tuition credit eliminated
The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
Memo: SFRB exempt from act
PORTRAITS OF JUÁREZ
by Hunter Riley and Ruben Hamming-Green
Schmidly: Don’t pawn off deficit on UNM community
news@dailylobo.com
by Shaun Griswold shaun24@unm.edu
SANTA FE — More than 80 UNM students rode the Rail Runner to the Roundhouse with a message: University students cannot sustain further tuition increases. The group was among about 150 students and administrators who gathered Monday in Santa Fe for UNM Day at the Legislature. They urged legislators to end the tuition credit. “Personally for me, I commute from Belen, and that is extra funds I don’t need to be spending,” student Amber Gallegos said. “It’s just a way to balance the budget and stick it to students, so it’s not very fair.” To promote solidarity, students and administrators wore UNM lapel pins and dressed head to toe in cherry, silver and black. University President David Schmidly said he spoke with representatives from the governor’s cabinet about the unforeseen cost to students if the tuition credit remained. “Right now, that tuition credit is still present, and I still continue to believe it is not good policy for higher education to be taxing students to run government,” Schmidly said. Schmidly said the University has not approved any tuition increases. “We will have much of the month of February for people to discuss those, then we will discuss them with the Legislature, and by March we will begin to put some concrete definition around our budget,” he said. To offset losses if the tuition credit is repealed, Schmidly said his economic advisory team will look at other areas to make budget cuts. He said the University released its first series of costcontainment recommendations three weeks ago. The President’s Strategic Advisory Team (PSAT) made recommendations to trim UNM’s $28 million deficit in half by consolidating Enrollment Management, IT services and UNM Press departments among other Universitywide cuts. PSAT also suggested cuts to UNM’s museums and the UNM Championship golf course. Closing the course would net the University an estimated $600,000 in savings, the report said. Schmidly said PSAT will make more recommendations throughout the legislative session, but he wants to avoid a tuition credit at all costs. “I’d rather give up more money than to have a credit. Then I could show the students where their money is spent,” he said. “Right now, this money that comes back as a credit, I can’t tell you where that money is spent, but students are paying for it. If we are going to collect tuition, then we need to spend it on students.” University departments filled the capitol building’s rotunda space and distributed fliers to legislators that
see Legislature page 3
Junfu Han / Daily Lobo Children stand in the dusk-choked streets of Anapra, Mexico, on Jan. 29. They try to maintain a semblance of childhood in an area riddled by violence. These photos are part of an ongoing project documenting the poor conditions Mexican citizens deal with on a daily basis. See more photos at DailyLobo.com.
DL
University Counsel ruled the Open Meetings Act does not apply to the Student Fee Review Board process, according to a counsel memo sent to ASUNM President Laz Cardenas on Jan. 26. The memo said the SFRB isn’t a decision-making body, and since it makes only recommendations that the University president can accept or reject, SFRB meetings aren’t subject to OMA laws. Cardenas said he was pleased with the counsel’s decision. “Of course, I knew that we were in the right,” he said. SFRB hearings were postponed Jan. 22 after a disagreement between board members over whether a video camera should be allowed to record the hearings. Cardenas called UNMPD to the hearings to have the camera removed. Officers said they couldn’t remove the camera after GPSA President Lissa Knudsen said video recording was allowed according to the NM Open Meetings Act. Hours later, Cardenas motioned for the board to suspend hearings pending a University Counsel ruling. The majority of student fee applicants’ hearings were put on hold until further notice. University Counsel ruled that in order for the act to apply to SFRB hearings, the counsel needed proof the SFRB was a policy-making body. The legal team was compelled to make this distinction because of a clause on page 9 of the Open Meetings Act Compliance Guide: “In some situations, even a non-statutory committee appointed by a public body may constitute a ‘policymaking body’ subject to the act if it makes any decisions on behalf of, formulates recommendations that are binding in any legal or practical way on, or otherwise establishes policy for the public body.” This would mean the UNM administration, for the most part, always adopted the SFRB’s student fee allocation recommendations. The memo, however, cited SFRB recommendations from 2004, 2007 and 2008, which the president and/or Board of Regents changed. Sarah Welsh, New Mexico Foundation for Open Government executive director, said this distinction between policy-making and recommendations is still up to interpretation. “I think they (University Counsel) recognize the various factors at play and tried to weigh the evidence,” she said. “So the issue becomes how you interpret the fact pattern: Does the University rubber-stamp the SFRB’s decisions? Or is it just one factor in the ultimate decision?” Welsh said in an e-mail that committees are not required to let the public video record meetings, but she said transparency is always best. “I think it behooves any body which purports to represent the public to make its proceedings open,” she said. “It’s not just a matter of accountability for the board. If you’re open, you’re more likely to hear a wide range of opinions and input, leading to better decisions.”
see ASUNM page 3