by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
A member of the Student Fee Review Board said its deliberations process is biased and in violation of University
policy.
The board makes recommendations for the allocation of about $8 million in mandatory student fees.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Graduate student and board member Isaac Padilla said the board unfairly increased funding recommendations to athletics instead of to programs that serve all students.
"If any student on campus needs tutoring, they can approach CAPS or the ethnic centers, but that's not true of the tutoring programs for the athletics departments," he said.
Athletics has seen the largest percentage increase in SFRB funding recommendations in the last four years, with an increase of about 60 percent since 2003.
The board recommended $1.25 million for athletics in 2006.
Padilla said unfair practices exist because the board doesn't adhere to
its rules.
The Student Fee Review Board policy states that the board's membership should reflect "the diverse makeup of the University."
Padilla said the undergraduate members don't reflect the diversity of UNM's student body.
"All of the undergraduates on the board who voted during our deliberations this year are studying business or economics. They are all from student government, and they are all Caucasian,"
he said.
Of the undergraduate members on the board, Brittany Jaeger, Andrea Roussel and Ashley Fate study marketing management, and Matt Barnes studies economics, according to the UNM directory.
The president of GPSA and the president and vice president of ASUNM serve on the board and nominate its other members.
Padilla said he will encourage students, ASUNM senators and the directors of the ethnic centers and the Women's Resource Center to write letters to next year's ASUNM president and vice president demanding that they nominate a more diverse group of students to the board.
Jaeger, president of ASUNM and chairwoman of the board, said the board is diverse enough.
"I'm so sick and tired of people saying there is a lack of diversity. I'm majority Hispanic, though I might not look like it," she said. "And I'm pretty concerned that someone would think that because someone is Caucasian that would mean that they wouldn't allocate funds properly."
Fate said she saw no problems with diversity in the board's undergraduate members because issues of diversity go beyond ethnicity or major.
"Diversity is a lot more than what college you're a part of or what ethnicity you are from," she said. "It's your education, your gender, your year in school and the organizations you are affiliated with. It's so many different things, and it's all
encompassing."
Padilla said ethnicity is fundamental to diversity.
"When you speak of the importance of diversity, it usually refers to people that have traditionally not had equal access to resources, and that has to do with ethnicity," he said. "When we speak of diversity, it needs to be across multiple areas of study (and) different ethnicities."
Padilla said the process for funding recommendations needs to be made more open to
avoid bias.
"Student fees are part of the cost of education that everyone is required to pay, and they're what students need to control most," he said. "The money can go to increased tutoring programs in athletics or to buy additional journals for the library. It depends on the recommendations of the Student Fee Review Board. So, deliberations need to be as open and unbiased
as possible."
