DAILY LOBO new mexico
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March 5, 2010
Faculty works to revive council for professors
Soaking up the sun
by Abigail Ramirez Daily Lobo
Zach Gould / Daily Lobo The UNM Women’s ultimate frisbee team sits and relaxes on Johnson Field after practicing in the afternoon sun. To increase their workout regime, some team members rode their bikes to practice.
Center offers tips on campus safety by Kallie Red-Horse Daily Lobo
Personal safety has been a hot issue on campus since the Feb. 15 stabbing, and the Women’s Resource Center wants to show students how to kick crime in the face. The WRC is hosting a self-defense presentation Monday to inform the UNM community how to stay safe. Summer Little, WRC program manager, said it’s in people’s best interest to know how to protect themselves. “Safety is everybody’s responsibility. We all owe it to ourselves to do
Self-defense workshop Monday Noon-1 p.m. SUB Lobo Room A what we can to keep ourselves safe,” she said. “We can say that safety has kind of percolated to the top of our minds currently. It is in everybody’s consciousness because of the recent incidences.” Student Kenzie Walters said she is considering attending the presentation to learn how to
protect herself. “I really did used to feel safe on campus, but now I don’t,” she said. “I have African dance until 7:50 in Carlisle every night, and I guess the stabbing happened really close to there around that time. Since then, I’ve been kind of freaked out and I make sure I have someone walking with me wherever I go past 7.” Students should get as much information on protection as possible, WRC Director Sandrea Gonzales said. “Information is power, and all of
Three NMSU-Dona Ana Community College professors made the trip to Albuquerque Thursday to attend “The ‘Crisis’ in Higher Education” forum. Olga Viramontes, arts and humanities professor, said they wanted to see what UNM faculty is doing to organize and how they can do the same. About 40 people filled the SUB Acoma A and B rooms to listen to the presentation sponsored by UNM’s American Association of University Professors Interim Council. According to an AAUP flier handed out at the meeting, the chapter addresses faculty concerns coming from the academic workplace. Stephen DeGuilio, college assistant professor at NMSU-DACC, said DACC’s president, Margie Huerta, announced to the Faculty Council on Feb. 23 they were going to eliminate 50 faculty and 55 staff members. “She announced the present situation at NMSU and qualified it by saying that the budget wasn’t finalized yet, but it could be worse,” he said. “There was no mention of
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ROOFLESS Daily Lobo
On March 15, the Westside Shelter and Hunger Coalition will close until November, taking with it about 200 available beds for the homeless. Continuing the “Roofless” series about homeless problems in Albuquerque, I spoke with homeless services throughout the city to discover how this closure will affect them, as well as to learn what kinds of services they provide and what UNM students can do to help.
Terrence Siemon / Daily Lobo Rebeca Gurrola, right, and Claudia DeSantiago practice takedowns in their personal defense class in Johnson Gym Thursday. The Women’s Resource Center is offering a personal defense class Monday in response to the Feb. 15 student stabbing.
Daily Lobo volume 114
issue 112
shortage of funds.” Steve Ludington, English and communication professor at NMSU-DACC, said this problem seems to be nationwide. Les Field, UNM anthropology professor, said the meeting was intended to reorganize the AAUP chapter, which fizzled about three years ago. He said 50 people met last spring to restart the chapter. “We have an interim council, and we need to move to the next stage, which is to elect officers,” he said. “We need to have participation and organization responding to the crisis.” Thursday’s forum took place on the National Day of Action to Defend Education, which is a national day of protest initiated by the University of California in an effort to protect public education in K-12 and higher education, said Alex Lubin, American studies associate professor. “Crisis can refer to a budget cut, but it can also refer to a plan to restructure education in the public sector as a whole,” he said. “Our concern is both the ways that the financial crisis impacts all of us in higher education … and also how the crisis can be used to reimagine and
see AAUP page 3
Closed shelters strain city’s homeless services by Andrew Beale
Inside the
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Shelter services Jeremy Reynalds, CEO and founder of the Joy Junction homeless shelter, said that when the Westside Shelter closes, Joy Junction will see more people asking for beds than it can accommodate. “In a nutshell, what’s happening is for four months a year, the City of Albuquerque funds a shelter in the old Westside jail. It can hold about 200 people,” he said. “When it closes, on March 15, people come to us. We have to turn away these people onto the increasingly dangerous streets.”
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Reynalds said Joy Junction may have to turn away 15 to 25 people a night. He said Joy Junction has no way to accommodate people left out in the cold when the shelter closes. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing. We’ve asked the city what we can do to help them, but as an organization, we don’t have the space,” he said. Joy Junction gives substanceabuse counseling, provides 300 beds a night and serves 10,000 meals a month, Reynalds said, but the problem is increasing beyond its capacity to help. “If the economy keeps on as it does, we cannot handle the impact of that,” he said. Health care Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless does exactly what its name suggests. AHCH Development Officer Paul Brown said homelessness presents unique problems for health care providers, and AHCH works to solve those problems. “Not having a home greatly exacerbates health issues. Doctors need to understand how to respond to a patient without a home,” he said. “We have our own doctors who have become experts at it.” Brown said the Westside
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