DAILY LOBO new mexico
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monday
May 2, 2011
The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
Regents decide against fee increase
OSAMA DEAD
SFRB suggestion upheld at expense of longer gym hours by Kevin Forte kforte@unm.edu
Al-Jazeera / AP Photo This file television image broadcast on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV is said to show Osama bin Laden at the wedding of his son in January of 2001. President Obama said Sunday that bin Laden is dead and the U.S. has the body. Read full story, page 3.
The budget is finalized. The regents unanimously passed the budget and finalized tuitionand-fees during Friday’s meeting at the SUB. Board of Regents President Jack Fortner said the board took the Student Fee Review Board’s recommendation not to increase student fees next year. Regent Gene Gallegos said that a $40 fee increase would have allowed Johnson Gym to stay open on weekends and afforded students longer library hours among other things. “The University is not funding the library appropriately,” he said. “It’s a real mistake not to make a fee for Johnson Gym and the library.” Fortner said that the regents wanted to take the SFRB’s advice. He said the regents would address the issue again when the
University has a clearer view of enrollment rates and more budgetary wiggle room. “One of the things we tried to do is to listen to the students,” he said. “They are going to have lost hours at the gym, but it’s important to let the students know that we listened.” Regent Don Chalmers said students are already financially strained and this budget allows somewhat of a reprieve. Given budget cuts, he said, the University has done well over the past several years. “We need to look at different places, instead of putting it on students’ backs,” he said. “Nobody likes this budget, but it’s as good as it’s going to get.”
Visit unm.edu/~budget to read the operating and capital budget plans
Activist: Corporations harm land, climate by José M. Enríquez jenriq01@unm.edu
Diné activist Louise Benally knows firsthand how corporate takeover can destroy traditional ways of life. Benally talked Friday at the SUB about how everything changed for her family when, in 1974, Peabody Coal Company opened a mine at Black Mesa, Ariz. Soon afterward, she said, roads opened and people started working for Peabody. “The land partitioning took place and things changed forev-
er,” she said. “The livestock were reduced down to 75 percent. Homes were no longer allowed to be built or reconstructed, or patched up, so things changed.” Benally was brought up in a traditional Diné lifestyle, and her parents weren’t formally educated. She remembers her family raised livestock, rode horses to camps and grew corn, squash and beans. But Diné means of survival became illegal. The federal government outlawed transporting windmills and lumber, growing and gathering wild foods and hunting animals in large
quantities, Benally said. “More and more of the land was being expanded for the mining companies,” she said. Presently, Diné people and other indigenous groups believe global climate changes threaten their traditional lifestyle, Benally said. Benally said the situation in Black Mesa is a microcosm of what’s happening globally. She said some groups want to live in a sustainable manner, but corporations want to extract the natural resources on these groups’ land. “There is so much poison being pulled out of the ground and into
Credit card meters offer convenience by Diego Gomez
dgomez24@unm.edu Keep your spare change for the laundromat. Last week, UNM began replacing coin-operated parking meters with machines that exclusively accept credit cards. The machines will operate for an area of about 15-20 spaces, as opposed to one coin meter on each space, said Robert Nelson, associate director of Parking and Transportation Services. He said that PATS explored various forms of meter technology before deciding which meters to install. “These are cost-effective, efficient, and we think good for the customer,” he said. “Customers would carry around coffee mugs full of quarters. They don’t have to do that now anymore.” PATS plans to wire the meters in the near future to accept
Inside the
Daily Lobo volume 115
issue 148
LoboCash. For right now, credit and debit cards are the only accepted payment forms. The pay-and-display machines are solar powered, web-based and wireless, meaning they can be moved to different locations if needed and are self sufficient as far as power goes, Nelson said. Whenever a card is swiped, the information is immediately sent to a computer database, the meter machine, and the customer’s bank statement. The new meters allow drivers to move their cars to different spaces around campus so long as they keep their receipts on the dashboards of their cars, Nelson said. “The space is not restricted by time anymore,” he said. “So you could buy eight hours of time if you wanted to, whereas before with the meters, you couldn’t put enough quarters in to buy that much time.
the air, and our community suffers from a lot of health problems from these pollutants that are released into the atmosphere,” Benally said. She said reversing the damage on the Black Mesa will be difficult. “How do we address these problems?” she said. “We really don’t know, but just to continue to have that relationship with the natural world, and that’s all we can do. But the future is unpredictable at the scale we are going at right now.” At UNM, students and professors are effecting positive change by developing technology and educating people in traditional ways,
Benally said. Sustainability studies professor Bruce Milne will run a USDA-sponsored field school this summer. In it, students will learn about New Mexico’s modern and traditional agriculture. They’ll visit Canyon de Chelly, a site about 40 miles away from Black Mesa. “The more diversity that we have in the number of species and the kinds of genotypes that are out there the better,” Milne said. “And cultural diversity and the knowledge that different people have is essential for enabling us to respond to the challenges that come along.”
UNITING THE NATIONS
Dylan Smith / Daily Lobo Michael Sheehan, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, blesses the 28th annual Gathering of Nations on Friday in the Pit. See more page 2.
Little hitter wins big game
May Day Protests
See page 2
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TODAY
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