Daily Lobo new mexico
It’s all over! see page 5
friday volume
March 25, 2011
115
issue 122
The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
student flees japan as unm sends aid
UNM’s Japanese fundraise and cope with devastation by Elizabeth Cleary
“Just because our friends and family are OK, doesn’t mean we’re OK. It’s so hard to see our tiny country destroyed.” ~ Student Haruna Nakayama
news@dailylobo.com
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 30-foot tsunami hit the northeast coast of Japan on March 11 — and the aftershocks are affecting people as far away as UNM. The natural disaster killed thousands, and rescue workers continue to search for missing persons two weeks later. UNM Japanese students and faculty wasted little time organizing fundraising events for Japan. Japanese students, faculty and supporters held a flea market and organized a bake sale Thursday. Thomas Bogenschild, director of the UNM Office of International Programs and Studies, said, as far as he knows, all Japanese students and faculty members have gotten in touch with their families, and everyone’s family members are safe and unharmed. “We sent out a message to all of the Japanese students and faculty saying that we would help them get in contact with people,” he said. “We didn’t hear from anyone, so we haven’t heard of any difficulty students have had reaching people there.” Bogenschild said two UNM students were studying abroad in Japan
see Japan page 3
Sasha Evangulova / Daily Lobo Well-wishers donated a variety of items, including videotapes and books, to an impromptu flea market organized by Japanese students and faculty that helped raise funds for relief efforts in Japan. The group raised more than $4,000 after a massive earthquake and tsunami rattled the country March 11.
Two groups travel to build houses, study economics
Coutesy of Ben Waddell Nicaraguan children gather around for a photo last summer during Professor Matias Fontenla’s Sustainable Development in Central America class. This year, 18 students will travel to the impoverished country to provide aid and learn economics.
kallie69@unm.edu
This summer, UNM students will travel to Central America’s poorest country to learn economics and lend a helping hand. Professor Matias Fontenla will take 18 students to Nicaragua in June for his Sustainable Development in Central America class. Fontenla said the program, in its second year, gives students six credit hours for a first-hand look at poverty and economic stagnation. “It is horrendously poorer than anything you can imagine or have seen,” he said. “I always
by Chelsea Erven and Shaun Griswold news@dailylobo.com
Nicaragua widens student viewpoints
by Kallie Red-Horse
Nuclear group to discuss true effects of Japan reactors
say economics is about improving quality of life, which is what we will aim to do there.” The class combines theory and observation, Fontenla said. Students are housed with individual families in Granada, and the families give them a room and three meals a day for the four-week course. Student Richard Bailey said his time in Nicaragua last year was eye-opening. “After three years of studying economics, I noticed that I understood the theoretical and the human side, but I only understood it through a narrow perspective — that of a citizen of a
very stable and wealthy country,” he said. “I realized that if I was going to graduate with a degree in economics, I should have a broader, more tangible perspective to go with it, too.” Student Felicia Alexander wasn’t one of the 18 who participated in the abroad course last year, but she took the opportunity to establish the UNM chapter of Nourish International, a group that raises money and organizes service projects to help fight global poverty and hunger. Nourish UNM will also travel to Nicaragua on July 5 for five weeks, where it will build homes for women. The last week of Fontenla’s course will assist Nourish’s efforts. “It was kind of a happy accident,” Alexander said. “By not getting into the program, it inspired me to find some other way to make a difference.” The chapter’s efforts raising money for the housing project earned it first prize in Nourish International’s fundraising contest. Nourish UNM raised $5,949, placing it above the 11 university chapters at schools including Yale, UCLA and the University of North Carolina. Nourish UNM’s housing project will sell deeds to homes at little cost to female heads of household, providing the owners with a property investment and increasing their independence, Alexander said. Fontenla said Nicaraguan people are in need of housing. Last year, students in his class helped remodel a neighborhood, outfitting the homes with brickand-tin roofs, indoor plumbing, running water and electricity. “Most houses are shacks with no roof,” he said. “It rains every day, so it constantly floods. We
created a neighborhood, and those homes are now beautiful. They are raised so they don’t flood. The health implications for having a house like that are tremendous.” Last summer’s trip inspired student participants to create the UNM Latin America Sustainability Association, Fontenla said. LASA is a community service organization that finances development projects and works to fulfill the need of sustainable development in Latin America, while supporting some already established nonprofit organizations, Fontenla said.
“I came back and said this was the most important thing I have done as an educator, because it really affected them.” ~ Professor Matias Fontenla “They said this was the most important experience of their life,” he said. “I came back and said this was the most important thing I have done as an educator, because it really affected them.” Bailey said that it benefits students to travel abroad, get handson experience and get out of comfort zones. “Education isn’t always in classrooms, devoid of any interaction beyond the formal student-professor form,” he said. “Sometimes it takes shaking the hand of the guy who possibly grows the beans for your coffee, or listening to a nurse talk about her experiences through a civil war, to really learn a few things about what you’re studying.”
The odds a nuclear reactor will explode in Japan are minimal, and citizens there face slim chance of radiation side effects, according to the UNM section of the American Nuclear Society. “Everything indicates that the efforts to keep the reactors and spent fuel cool using sea water are succeeding,” ANS representative Margaret Root said. “While there is still some release of radiation, the quantities are minimal and safe, particularly since the area around the plant has been evacuated.” UNM ANS works to help inform the public about nuclear science and engineering and help nuclear engineering students learn and connect with other people in the industry. The group will host a panel discussion at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Root said small levels of iodine and cesium have spread into the atmosphere and concedes that water in the area has some level of radiation. She said people have been advised to not eat fish or drink water from the contaminated area in Japan. “It is difficult to say exactly when those waters will be open to fishing again,” Root said. Some milk has also been contaminated, but Peter Caracappa, a health physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said you would have to drink 58,000 glasses of contaminated milk to increase chances of getting cancer by just 4 percent. Root said most media coverage has been blown out of proportion and fueled fears the reactor could blow up. “When hydrogen gas, which was generated by a chemical reaction in the core, hit the air, a spark was all that was necessary to ignite it and cause an explosion,” she said. “At no point were the reactors a danger comparable to the earthquake, tsunami or aftershocks.” Members from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a government body in charge of reactor safety, and members from Sandia National Laboratories have gone to Japan to give consultation, Root said. “Even at its worst moments, the situation in Japan never reached the scale of Chernobyl accident in Russia,” she said.
American Nuclear Society Panel Discussion The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History 601 Eubank Blvd. SE Saturday, 1:30 p.m.