DAILY LOBO new mexico
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March 29, 2013
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Team to race for funding in G Lot
BURST WATER MAIN
by Ardee Napolitano news@dailylobo.com
UNM’s motorsports team is gearing up for the largest collegiate engineering competition in the world. Lobo Motorsports is sponsoring an autocross competition Saturday at UNM’s G parking lot to fundraise for the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers competition to be held in June. The race will be open to the public and any car or truck is allowed to participate. Lobo Motorsports Project Manager Kirby Ann Witte said funds from the event would allow for a bigger team in the competition. She said that although the team has already started gathering funds, it could still use a little more money. “We have already raised $43,000, which has allowed us to register for competition, buy materials for our car, maintain older cars, and pay for tires and fuel,” she said. “Now we just need to raise a little more to get the team to competition. Without this event, we may not be able to take enough people to be competitive.”
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Juan Labreche/ @LabrecheMode / Daily Lobo Sandbags, used to dam water streaming toward CNM student David Wyman’s home located on UNM campus, lay caked in mud. A burst water main on Las Lomas left Wyman’s basement flooded.Wyman and his roommates constructed a makeshift barrier to divert the water away from the house, using parts of a fence, sandbags, a picnic table and other household items. At the time of publication there was no ready estimate as to the cost of damage. City offices were closed by the time the Daily Lobo arrived at the scene and could not be contacted to give an explanation for the break.
GPSA candidates prep for next week’s elections Graduate and Professional Student Association presidential elections are Monday through Thursday. Both candidates sat down with the Daily Lobo to further explain their election platforms. by John Tyczkowski
news@ dailylobo.com Gias laid out a five-part platform for his GPSA campaign, which covers interdisciplinary research collab oration, graduate funding, Sharif Gias community outreach, campus safety and diversity. He said a number of the points go together: For example, he said the lack of easily-accessible graduate funding due to federal cuts can be dealt with through interdisciplinary collaboration. “I encourage students to collaborate and write student grants,” Gias said. “Funding is sparse and students need to come together for their common cause.” Gias also said he would focus on external funding sources unlike his opponent, Priscila Poliana, who he said takes an exclusively internal funding approach. “My opponent has talked about how she will go to the president’s office, the VP of economic development, but that is all internal,” Gias said. “How do you fight for external funding? Through showing your
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research capability, prospects and needs to outside sources.” When speaking about community outreach, Gias cited a financial education community outreach project he helped create while teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He created it in concert with the university’s department of finance and secured funding from the U.S. Treasury Department to educate students about topics such as credit card use and how to avoid credit card debt. “We not only supported these initiatives, but brought in a lot of community funding and awareness through this program,” Gias said. “I would like to see the same thing here. It is viable here because I have done it and I will work to make it happen again.” Sharif said he went to different departments at UNM and “knocked door-todoor” to get a sense of the campus safety concerns that different students have. “I believe in gathering grassroots-level information,” Gias said. “I went to the departments to find out what is happening in this respect at UNM.” Gias discussed plans for extending current shuttle bus services past 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. to accommodate graduate students who work late hours doing research on
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issue 127
news@ dailylobo.com Poliana laid out a three-point platform that covers securing funding for graduate students, fostering a culture of unity at UNM and Priscila Poliana promoting campus safety and diversity. She said graduate funding is her main priority in order to relieve the debt burden on graduate students at UNM that she said makes graduate school not financially sound. “What I see is a significant proportion of graduate students relying on loans because tuition is so high,” Poliana said. “These people work at the University, they have a job, but they don’t necessarily have tuition remission or health insurance.” She discussed GPSA’s new one-time assistantship grants, and said she would like to expand them to create repeat opportunities for more students to have access to monthly stipends, partial tuition remission and health insurance.
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Daily Lobo volume 117
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by John Tyczkowski
As part of her goal of unifying the student body, Poliana said she wants to encourage students to take advantage of the Faculty/Staff Club happy hours every week to help main and north campus students meet halfway. She also said she wants to create a weekly calendar of all graduate student events on both campuses. “It’s about networking, it’s a matter of introducing people … so they can transit among each others’ circles and can get past the physical barriers between campuses and start working together for common causes,” Poliana said. Poliana also said she believes her campus connections give her an edge over her opponent and send a better message of unity to students. The University could leverage this when going to Santa Fe to petition the Legislature for funds and UNMrelated laws, she said. “I have a plan, I know what I’m doing, I know the people and I’m already meeting with them … and a number of student organizations, saying, ‘Guys, I’m here, let’s do this now’,” she said. “I am known by this community and I know my community.” Concerning campus safety, Poliana said women and students of color are under attack at UNM, citing the recent campus sexual assaults this semester and the
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