COLUMN: Senate involves high schools

by Heather R. Gabel

ASUNM Vice President

and Jonathan Maple

ASUNM Senate Marketing Committee Chairman

I hope that everyone is excited for Thanksgiving break and will be able to use these extra days to relax and maybe do a little studying for your upcoming finals.

In previous articles, I have informed you about the Finance Committee, the Presidential Appointments Committee, Steering and Rules Committee and the ad hoc Recycling Committee. In this article, Sen. Maple and I are going to talk to you about the ASUNM Marketing Committee.

The Marketing Committee is one of the ASUNM Senate's three ad hoc committees this semester. These are informal committees that are created to help the ASUNM Senate meet its goals. The goals of the ASUNM Senate this semester are to work on creating an ASUNM position that will concentrate on marketing its services and projects to the UNM and Albuquerque community; make textbooks more accessible to students through a textbook exchange program; and to create a recycling program for the entire UNM community.

To help accomplish these goals, the ASUNM senators are serving on one of three ad hoc committees. These committees are the Recycling Committee, the Book Exchange Committee and the Marketing Committee, which is the focus of this week's column.

Currently, six ASUNM senators are members of the Marketing Committee. These include Sens. Bitakis, Cabrera, French, Lucero, Sims and Chairman Maple. The ASUNM Senate Marketing Committee is in the planning stages of what will be the largest high school outreach program ever attempted by the UNM undergraduate student government. Some past attempts to reach out and connect with local high school leaders have been met with little success. After reflecting on why this has been the case, the ASUNM Senate Marketing Committee realized that ASUNM's channels of outreach to high school leaders are virtually nonexistent.

To create a channel of communication between UNM's collegiate government and our local high school governments, the Marketing Committee has drafted a letter of intent asking for each target high school's level of interest in a Leadership Workshop/Conference to be sponsored by ASUNM in the spring. This has been presented to the current ASUNM Senate for full review and feedback and senators are eager to implement this new idea. We have also proposed the idea to the senators who were elected in this recent election and they express their intent of ensuring this program's success.

The letter is being mailed to all local high schools today and we hope to receive feedback soon. The time for change is now and ASUNM is poised to create a new channel of communication between the local high school student governments and our University. If you or anyone you know would like to offer suggestions to any of the ad hoc committees, please feel free to stop by the ASUNM office on the second floor of the Student Services Center, Room 262, or call 277-5528 for more information.

Another subject that ASUNM is already working on is preventing a dramatic tuition increase for the upcoming school year. We have arranged to host a forum on Wednesday Dec. 4, at 6 p.m., in the Kiva Lecture Hall with Vice President of Business and Finance Julie Weaks Gutierrez. She will speak about tuition issues and inform us on how the process works. You will hear about this forum in more detail in President Onuska's article next Monday, Dec. 2.

Lastly, I would like everyone to know that every year ASUNM awards six $500 scholarships to undergraduates enrolled in at least 12 credit hours with a minimum of a 2.5 cumulative GPA. You must meet these criteria at the time of selection and time of the awards disbursement in the Fall 2003 semester.

These scholarships are awarded in the memory of Jenny Marie Ames, who was associate justice for the ASUNM Court from August of 1996 until her untimely death on Nov. 7 of the same year. ASUNM awards these scholarships to "those students who reflect the citizenship, intelligence, community service and determination that personified Jenny Marie Ames."

You can pick up the application in the ASUNM Office (Student Services Center, Room 262). All applications must be filled out completely and returned to the ASUNM office by 5 p.m., Friday, Feb. 7; no late applications will be accepted. I hope that we receive many applications and will be able to select recipients that will encompass everything Jenny Marie Ames exemplified in her time with ASUNM.