DAILY LOBO new mexico
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wednesday
March 30, 2011
The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
TRY, TRY AGAIN
Alumnus lectures on atomic bomb Speaker outlines radiation’s far-reaching devastation by Diego Gomez
dgomez24@unm.edu
Robert Maes / Daily Lobo UNM rugby player Nick Hernandez waits for his turn at drills on Johnson Field on Tuesday. The team is two wins away from qualifying for the National Competition, where it would first play Stanford. The team will hold a fundraiser April 6 at Lucky 66 Bowling.
Student regent eyes tuition, energy by Alexandra Swanberg aswanny@unm.edu
Ever since he was young, Jake Wellman was groomed for responsibility — and that doesn’t seem to be changing. The recently appointed student regent said having a seat on the board gives him a chance to be a “servant leader.” He said he was a Boy Scout in middle school, and that experience motivated him to take on leadership roles. “I learned the rewards of helping other people and doing a job that I had to get done well,” he said. “I think that satisfaction in that service just really caught on with me, and it’s something I want to continue with.” Wellman applied for the student regent position early last semester, and said he felt he met the board’s needs. For two years, he was the class president at his high school. He helped establish a chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity as a freshman at UNM. He was the former president of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and ASUNM Chief of Staff and Attorney General. Over spring break, the board appointed him to the New Mexico Educational Assistance Foundation Board, the Lobo Energy Board and the UNM Hospital Board of Trustees. Over the past few weeks, Wellman said he has spent time with students, constituency groups, faculty and staff to hear concerns. He said that increasing tuition has been a recurring fear. “Right now I think tuition is probably No. 1, just because of the timing and the nature of the economy,” he
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said. “I guess University spending has kind of tied into that, but I think one of the issues that I’ve heard a lot, from students specifically, is asking the University to cut wherever they can without raising tuition.” Second to tuition, Wellman said, is the need to evaluate the positions in the top-heavy administration. He said it’s important to consider how decisions will affect the University’s
academic mission and the student experience. “It’s not one or two things we can do to say, ‘OK, check, check, education’s better — move on.’” he said. “It continues and should be at the core of everything you do, and moves forward in enriching that experience that students get when they come to the University.” A student in the Sustainability
Studies program, Wellman said he plans to go to law school and focus on American energy use. “I’m interested in looking at how America deals with the climate change we’re going through — right now in Congress or in state or private sectors, trying to help the public cope with the changes in energy that we’re experiencing and are coming,” he said.
In spring 1953, 600 people at the site and another 15 million television viewers watched an atomic bomb explode in the Mojave Desert. UNLV professor Andrew Kirk said scientists coordinated the atomic explosions to demonstrate the eerie effects on a house and the mannequins set up inside it. In the UNM alumnus’ lecture, “Doomtown: Picturing Home on the Nevada Test Site,” Kirk said the test site was thought to be nothing more than an empty space in Nevada, but in reality, hundreds of thousands lived there, including the Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes. “The West is a complicated place,” Kirk said. “What appeared to be blank spots are full of history. Empty landscapes, supposed waste lands, are loaded with human history of forgotten people and forgotten stories.” The day of the demonstration, Native American tribes protested at the site’s gate, but the scientists proceeded. Kirk showed images of a house built 3,500 feet from ground zero. It was filled with furniture, consumer goods and mannequins, which scientists positioned to look like they were performing everyday tasks. At various locations, dummies sat in cars and trucks.
“The West is a complicated place. What appeared to be blank spots are full of history.” ~Andrew Kirk UNLV Professor, UNM Alumnus
Robert Maes / Daily Lobo Junior Jake Wellman relaxes at hiis office in the SUB. Wellman was appointed by Governor Susana Martinez to serve as Student Regent until December 2012.
Poor little guy
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Photographer Vernon Jones captured the blast amd depicted the house bending from the nuclear wind force before it was engulfed in flames three seconds later. Hundreds of dogs, pigs and mice dressed in human clothing were placed at the Nevada Test Site, Kirk said. Kirk said pigs are anatomically similar to humans, so they made perfect test specimens for the project.
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