Daily Lobo new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
tuesday April 28, 2015 | Volume 119 | Issue 149
ASUNM taking its elections online By David Lynch Undergraduate students won’t have to visit the SUB to vote in elections for the Associated Students of UNM in the fall. In fact, they won’t even have to be on campus. ASUNM unanimously passed Bill 21S last week at its last Senate meeting of the semester, approving an initiative headed by Sens. Nadia Cabrera and Bisaan Hanouneh that would allow online access to ASUNM elections. Increasing voter access was their main motivation, especially for commuter students, Cabrera said. But she also said that online voting for ASUNM, which GPSA already utilizes
for its elections, was inevitable. “Quite simply, this is the way of the future. It’s not necessarily a new, innovative system — it’s just time for UNM to move forward,” she said. “In the same way that we made the shift from paper ballots to the restricted online voting we have now, we are now adapting to the demands of modern students.” The online ballot will be available through myUNM — the same method that monitored voting locations already use for elections. “We think this is the way to streamline it so that you can’t vote once at a polling station and then once at your house,” Cabrera said. She pointed out that due to
elections occurring at roughly the same time as class registration, the site will be generating a lot of traffic, which will hopefully translate to a large number of votes. At the outset, Cabrera and Hanouneh faced opposition from some members of ASUNM as well as University administration with regard to whether online voting can be smoothly implemented. The uneasiness was, for the most part, held over from the times that the same system was attempted previously. “Many have tried and failed to take on this huge project,” Cabrera said. “When it was tried in the past, the legislation was hastily written with little research, all polling stations
were abandoned, and there were no safeguards instituted in terms of time restrictions or campaign regulations.” But she and Hanouneh made sure to work around the issues ahead of time, one of which was negative campaigning: students sending the link to other students and telling them not to vote for certain candidates. “People would have the link right there and could act on the negative actions,” she said. “This link cannot be forwarded; only UNM students can use it, and only one time.” Additionally, when it comes to uninformed voters casting ballots, online voting wouldn’t create any new issues, Cabrera said. “Honestly, that stuff happens now
anyway. In fact, even those things happened now, where I heard that poll workers would take their friends’ IDs and vote for them,” she said. “That’s a kind of fraud that happens already, and voting online wouldn’t necessarily make that a worse situation.” The plan also calls for an interactive element to the ballot, with which voters can read short bios of each candidate by mousing over their names. The senators also looked at other schools that implement online balloting for student government elections to ensure they covered all bases. Cabrera said one of the ideas
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Alum’s effort shows locally By Matthew Reisen
Nick Fojud/ Daily Lobo / @nfojud
Brandon Schmandt, an assistant professor for the Earth and Planetary Sciences department, along with scientists from the University of Utah, recently investigated a large magma chamber under the Yellowstone caldera in Yellowstone National Park. The chamber is about 19 miles below the caldera.
Asst. professor studies sea of magma By Moriah Carty
Yellowstone National Park’s bowels are at least 9,000 kilometers deep. Although this may seem like an odd statistic, one of UNM’s assistant professors, who is working in conjunction with the University of Utah, said it was partially to be expected. The findings were published online last Thursday in the journal Science. The publication gives readers a view of the deep crust volume where melts from the mantle are processed. The rocks that are found in and around Yellowstone didn’t seem to match the information understood previously, said assistant Earth and Planetary Sciences professor
Brandon Schmandt. “If your starting point is melting the mantle, the question is, ‘how do we get these silica-rich rhyolites to be the major constituent of largevolume eruptions at Yellowstone?’” he said. “There has to be some kind of staging or mixing area in the deep crust, the lower crust to make those rhyolites.” The group used seismic waves to scope out an image of the mantel below the caldera, he said. While there aren’t enough data elsewhere to compare the magnitude of the Yellowstone chamber to other places, it is still a starting point for future projects “It’s a difficult depth range to image; we are better at working shallower than deeper,” Schmandt said. “This is sort of a tough part of
Earth to image.” Depending on the temperature of the area the seismic waves are traveling through, they will move faster or slower, he said. The reservoir is similar to those seen near subduction zones, which are fueled by mantle melting, he said. It has a lot in common with continental arc volcanoes, which are volcanoes that form along tectonic plates near subduction zones. The chamber is now estimated to hold enough magma to fill the 1,000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times, whereas previously it was estimated to fill the Grand Canyon only two and half times, according to the UNM press release. The newly-sounded magma reservoir is four and a half times
larger than previously determined, which refines what scientists have studied for the past 10 to 15 years, according to the release. Yellowstone is listed online as the country’s flagship national park — the first national park in the United States. Yellowstone National Park touts incredible features, ecologically, geologically and more, which is why it has caught the attention of many geologists over the years. “It is fun,” Schmandt said. “I do whatever science I think is interesting and has some importance.”
Adrian Carver is a native of Albuquerque and Spanish alumnus. As a student Carver became a founding member of the New Mexico Youth Alliance, and he is now serving as the co-director of the New Mexico Forum for Youth in Community. Through the years he has served with many other organizations, including Amnesty International, the Educational Equity Working Group and the New Mexico Men’s Council for Boys and Young Men. In May 2013 Carver was elected to the Young Democrats of New Mexico and serves as president of the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce Board. Carver visited UNM last week, and the Daily Lobo caught up with him to ask a few questions about the conservation and health of the state. What got you into this line of work, and what are the biggest rewards/stresses? “I grew up in a small working family that placed high value on working hard and giving back. I still remember my dad waking up early every day to go build other people’s
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Moriah Carty is the news editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @MoriahCarty. Courtesy Photo