DAILY LOBO new mexico
tuesday February 11, 2014
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
GPA standard gets unwitting support
YEAR OF THE HORSE
ASUNM oversight promotes scholarship stipulations by Ardee Napolitano news@dailylobo.com @ArdeeTheJourno
The distribution of cards by the Associated Students of New Mexico during UNM Day in the state legislature last week is the cause of complaints among students and members of a local organization.
“I can throw up the same argument of Barack Obama saying, ‘OK, gay marriage is going to be legalized.’ Is that representative of everybody’s views? Probably not.” ~Isaac Romero ASUNM president Virginia Necochea, a UNM graduate student and member of the New Mexico Coalition of Equity and Justice, said the cards misrepresented the UNM student body’s support for raising the GPA requirement of the Legislative Lottery Scholarship to address its insolvency. “The way it reads, it’s a blanket statement on behalf of ‘the students of the University of New Mexico,’” she said. “I am very offended by this because I am a graduate student in the University of New Mexico, and I completely don’t agree with this.” The cards stated that “the students at the University of New Mexico would like to see the lottery scholarship GPA requirement increased to 2.75,” and were attached to chocolate gold coins when they were distributed to lawmakers and attendees on UNM Day. Necochea said she was immediately disappointed when she was handed the card. “There were greeters there, these ASUNM reps, and they were handing out these cards for whoever who was passing by,” she said. “I was given this card with chocolate attached to it and I thought, ‘Awesome, chocolate.’ Maybe they were just advertising. When I started reading the card, I just stopped.” But ASUNM President Isaac Romero said that the distribution of the cards was an oversight. ASUNM and student governments from other New Mexico universities initially decided to distribute the cards to reflect their support for the GPA increase, Romero said. But on the
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night before UNM Day, he said, representatives met and collectively decided to withdraw their support for increasing the scholarship’s GPA requirement. “As the session started to progress and roll through, we, as a coalition, determined that right now is certainly not the political climate for the GPA increase,” he said. “We were hearing from our constituents that it was not what we wanted to see moving forward. We still distributed (the cards). It was an oversight, I admit, on ASUNM’s part, when it was something that we had decided not to continue with.” Still, Romero said the cards were not an intentional misrepresentation of the UNM student body. “I can throw up the same argument of Barack Obama saying, ‘OK, gay marriage is going to be legalized.’ Is that representative of everybody’s views?” he said. “Probably not. We came up with the best decisions that we could moving forward.” Necochea said her main concern about the cards was that their claims were not attributed to ASUNM. “Nowhere on here do you see ‘ASUNM,’” she said. “So the general public, what they leave with is the impression this is general UNM literature information … ASUNM is not representative of the entire student body. If they’re going to take that position, that is their position … I don’t think that just because they’re ASUNM and they’ve been elected, it gives them the power to misrepresent the entire student body.” And she demands that ASUNM publicly apologize for the oversight, she said. “When it’s already been handed out … what can we do?” she said. “What is necessary here is for there to be a clarification on the part of ASUNM, especially (from) President Isaac Romero, to explain how this card was endorsed.” Necochea said that, according to data gathered by the New Mexico State University, raising the required GPA and course load for the scholarship would hurt low-income students. She said students’ GPAs should not be indicative of their eligibility for the scholarship. “As a teacher for 15 years, I’m coming from that angle,” she said. “I know that the GPA of a student is not indicative of a student’s worth. I entered college leaving high school with a 4.0 GPA. Then I dropped below 2.75 because I was a biology major, not because I wasn’t working hard. It’s because my high school did not prepare me.” Necochea said she disapproves fully of Senate Bill 150, which aims to raise the GPA requirement for the scholarship. But Romero said that any fuss
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Rachel Toraño-Mark / @carpeline/ Daily Lobo Shanshan Rothlisberger, a UNM graduate student in physical education, prepares to play the chinese harp while her husband, Jacob Rothlisberger, tunes the instrument before she goes on stage. UNM hosted the Chinese Spring Festival Gala 2014 in the SUB Ballrooms Sunday evening. A full night of performances complemented cuisine and activities related to chinese culture.
Drug use takes hit in NM Survey numbers indicate less binge drinking, drug abuse since 2008
by Chloe Henson
assistant-news@dailylobo.com @ChloeHenson5 A new survey suggests drug and alcohol use among New Mexico college students isn’t as high as it was five years ago. The New Mexico Higher Education Prevention Consortium released the results of an annual survey measuring the prevalence of alcohol and drug use among the state’s university students. This year, NMHEPC compared the data collected in the spring 2013 semester to survey results from 2008. The results this year indicate that use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, prescription drugs, cocaine and methamphetamine has decreased among New Mexico college students. “Almost every single indicator — and all of the indicators that were important — moved positively,” said NMHEPC Director John Steiner. “In other words, there was less underage drinking, less excessive or binge drinking.” Steiner, who is also program manager for the Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention at UNM, said he thinks the decrease in alcohol and drug use can be attributed to preventative measures taken by the consortium, as well as increased student awareness. “I think there’s a combination of things,” he said. “We do a lot, and so do the other schools in this consortium, to encourage students to think about
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their drinking, to plan ahead, to consider using a designated driver.” The consortium consists of UNM Main Campus, UNM Valencia, New Mexico State University, Eastern New Mexico University, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Santa Fe Community College and San Juan College. The survey measured the alcohol, tobacco and drug use of almost 2,700 students across those campuses. The study indicates that a higher proportion of students who binge drink suffer academic consequences compared to students who drink moderately. For example, 22 percent of occasional binge drinkers and 37.5 percent of frequent binge drinkers reported performing poorly on a test or important project, while 13 percent of moderate drinkers faced the same consequence. Occasional binge drinkers are students who reported consuming five or more drinks in one sitting in the last two weeks, while frequent binge drinkers reported imbibing the same amount on two or more occasions in the last two weeks. The rate of binge drinking in the 2013 report improved enough to put New Mexico in good standing nationally. “The binge rate was 41 percent in 2008 among all students,” said NMHEPC Coordinator Tiffany Martinez. “In 2013 we went down to 36 percent. Nationally, it’s still at 40 to 41
percent, so we’re a good four or five percentage points below the nation’s drinking rate.” According to the report, students are also taking more action to protect themselves from drugs and alcohol. Such measures include hanging out with people who drink less or who drink more slowly, having designated drivers and keeping track of the number of drinks they’ve had. Drinking and driving has also decreased, according to the report. Almost 71 percent of the state college students surveyed reported they had not gone drinking and driving in the past year. Steiner said the data was collected from surveys distributed in classrooms at the consortium campuses. He said the consortium keeps track of the school’s demographics to help obtain a representative sample. “We start out knowing what our demographics are for our various ethnic and racial categories, our gender and everything,” he said. “As we sample, we record that and make sure we’re falling into line with the UNM demographics. If we’re falling out of line, then we can try to tweak ourselves back in … and our demographics reported fairly closely mirror student demographics for undergrads.” Martinez said she was proud to see such positive results come back from the New Mexico survey. “I think we did a great job as a consortium and as a whole,” she said.
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