DAILY LOBO new mexico
wednesday March 26, 2014
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
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Frida Salazar / Daily Lobo 1 Nora Anaya raises her hand as the crowd cheers for her nephew, who was shot by APD 23 years ago. The Justice Rally ended their march on the steps of the Sheriff ’s Department and Albuquerque Police Dept. on 400 Marquette Avenue. 2 The ANSWER Coalition, a social justice and anti-racism organization, carried a coffin covered with the names of people who have been killed by the Albuquerque Police Department. 3 Protesters march from 1st Street to 400 Marquette Avenue, where they stopped at the front entrance to the Albuquerque Police and Sheriff ’s Department.
‘Whose street? James’ street.’ by Ardee Napolitano / @ArdeeTheJourno / news@dailylobo.com
Seven pairs of hands held up a black plywood coffin Tuesday night at the intersection of Central Avenue and First Street. It had a white wooden cross on its top cover. One of its sides was spread with amateur, almost blurry home photos of various men. Another side read “APD KILLED US” in blue marker. A woman in the audience called out for a red marker, but nobody had one on hand. So the protest proceeded, and several men bore the mock coffin to the Albuquerque Police Department’s headquarters lacking
James Boyd’s name. Some 1,000 people gathered downtown to protest APD’s killing of Boyd, a homeless man who APD officers shot after finding him to have been illegally camping in the Sandia foothills on March 16. The protest was organized by the Act Now, Stop War, End Racism Coalition (ANSWER), a local activist organization. Joel Gallegos, one of the protest’s organizers, said ANSWER began planning the event as soon as APD released a video of Boyd’s killing Friday. He said the officers murdered Boyd. “We wanted to give people an
James Boyd’s death is the latest strike against APD in recent years
outlet for their anger,” he said. “And we feel like the healthiest way they can let their anger out is by protesting … We want to make sure that the police department knows that we’re watching. We’re not going to take this anymore.” The video depicts Boyd turning away from officers, saying that he agrees to leave the mountain with them just before the officers open fire. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Boyd appears “to pull out knives in both hands as an officer with a dog approaches him.” As he starts to turn away, officers shoot him. Blood
is visible on the mountain rocks. Attendees of the protest marched across the Alvarado Transportation Center to APD Headquarters on Marquette Avenue, carrying Boyd’s name on placards and barking accusatory chants at police. The brigade swarmed the front steps of the police department’s headquarters amid the uproar. Gallegos, a UNM student majoring in education, said this was the largest protest of APD he had ever attended. ‘All James Boyd’ Relatives of other men shot dead by APD were present at the event. Albuquerque resident Nora Anaya helped lift the mock coffin with her cane, unable to control her tears. More than two decades ago, she said, an APD officer killed her nephew, then 23. “He was in love with the wrong girl,” she said. “She was at a party; they got in a fight. She got shot. He took her
in the car to the hospital. She landed up in the car with my nephew as police shot through the window as he was driving down Atrisco. It hurts. It still hurts 23 years later.” Anaya, who attended the protest dressed in funeral garb embellished with a veil, said she was unable to speak out about her nephew’s killing at that time. But because she felt the same despair after Boyd’s murder, she said, she came out in support of a good cause. “The feeling is just as bad,” she said. “He’s a brother, and he didn’t deserve to be killed. He wasn’t harming anyone. He was camping out away from people. James Boyd deserved to live.” APD has shot 23 men to death since 2010, Gallegos said. One of these men, Daniel Tillison, is survived by his wife, Mary Jobe, and their three children.
see Protest PAGE 2
Regents mull tuition hikes for faculty, staff compensation by Chloe Henson
assistant-news@dailylobo.com @ChloeHenson5
After four hours of presentations and discussion, the UNM Board of Regents decided to postpone the decision on next year’s tuition and fee rates. At UNM’s Budget Summit on Tuesday in the Student Union Building, the regents were supposed to vote on a budget recommendation provided by President Robert Frank and the Strategic Budget Leadership Team to determine tuition and fee rates for fiscal year 2015. The regents would also have voted on compensation rates for staff and faculty. The regents voted to postpone the decision in order to gather more information. Regent Gene Gallegos said the regents have asked to be included in the budgetmaking process earlier every year in order to better understand the recommendation. He said that this year the SBLT provided information too late for the regents
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to ask enough questions about the budget scenarios. The regents received three of the scenarios on Friday and another one Monday afternoon, Gallegos said. “I don’t see how we can make decisions based on last-minute information like this,” he said. Later in the meeting, Gallegos moved to table the item on the agenda that addressed approval of compensation, tuition and fee rates. Board of Regents President Jack Fortner declared a special meeting to be held on Friday at noon in the SUB’s Ballroom C to make a decision on the item. President Frank said he is also unsatisfied with the process of creating recommendations for the budget. “What I told (the SBLT) was I wanted to meet with them in the next few weeks to have a conversation about how we could improve this process dramatically to move this conversation much earlier,” he said. Frank cited several processes used by
different institutions as possible solutions. Some of the president’s suggestions included delaying the decision for later in the school year or having a conversation about the budget earlier, and then coming back to the discussion later to make a final decision. The SBLT gathers information from students, staff, deans, faculty, the Regents Academic/Student Affairs & Research Committee and the Regents Finance & Facilities Committee, according to a document delineating the SBLT charge. The SBLT then offers a recommendation to the president, who then makes a recommendation to the Board of Regents, according to the document. The regents brought up several concerns about the recommendation during the meeting, including a proposed increase in tuition that would be used to pay for a raise in compensation for staff and faculty. Regent Suzanne Quillen said raising tuition year after year is not a sustainable way to solve issues at the University. “We are just, every year, putting a band-
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aid on a very large problem,” she said. Quillen said the regents should think outside the box to get money for compensating staff and faculty. But Provost Chaouki Abdallah said increasing compensation could retain faculty and help students in the long run. “The students are not just our customers in this — they’re our partners in this,” he said. “We can’t teach them if they don’t learn. Therefore, part of this is for them, for us to be able to help them by providing them with more support.” Abdallah said the cost of UNM’s education is still relatively low, considering the value students receive from their educations. He said investing in faculty now would act as a trade-off and help students later. Gallegos said he hopes that regents will be more involved in the process of making the budget recommendations in the future. “I won’t be here,” he said. “But I hope in the future the rest of these members are put into the process at least a couple of months before this process is done.”
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