Editor,
There is a student on our campus who has fought to make the lives better - or at least cheaper - for students at UNM.
And this student just so happens to be the President of the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico, Andrea Cook.
Some may ask how Andrea has fought for us since she has been elected President?
Well, first of all the answer is simple, yet there is a long list of things that she has done, however I can only touch on a few issues in this letter.
First, Andrea realized early on in the school year that there was inevitably going to be a tuition increase.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Andrea looked very carefully for a lobby director, found Jason Weeks and appointed him at the beginning of this semester.
He invited UNM students and the ASUNM Senate to go to Santa Fe and lobby the legislature for more money to go to the University of New Mexico.
Secondly, the reason that tuition is only going up 4.3 percent next year instead of the 8 to 15 percent increase like the previous two years is largely due to Andrea.
Andrea sat in a room full of administrators and held firm for UNM students when the regents were meeting about raising tuition.
In fact, she would not budge when the regents wanted to raise tuition from 4.3 percent to 4.5 percent.
Do you remember at the beginning of the semester the UNM Bookstore closed to the public to have tax free textbook sales for students?
Well, thanks to Andrea Cook and Dupuy Bateman, we got the chance to have those two weeks in the beginning of each semester as a time in which we can buy all of our textbooks tax-free.
Now Andrea and Dupuy are lobbying the Legislature to change the tax-free textbook law so that all you have to do is just show your Lobo identification card, and you can get the discount without the Bookstore having to close down to the public for that two-week period.
This is the biggest complaint of the bookstore because it loses quite a bit of money during those two weeks each semester because the public is not allowed to make purchases.
I would hope that UNM students would join with me in saying "thank you" to Andrea Cook for all of her hard work.
These are just some of the things that Andrea has done for us as our president. So when you are out on Election Day wondering how ASUNM affects you, just remember that an effective president such as Andrea Cook can save you money.
Paul C. Campbell
ASUNM senator
