by Ashleigh Sanchez
Daily Lobo
About 40 students gathered in the SUB on Tuesday to discuss campus issues with ASUNM senators.
ASUNM's first forum received a larger turnout than expected, Sen. Joe Sanchez said.
"It was very successful," he said. "The students brought up questions that we've never even thought about before."
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Student groups on North Campus miss out on the opportunity to interact with the senators on Main Campus, one student said.
Sen. Christina Lovato said a schedule should be set up for senators to visit North Campus and work with those student groups.
A main concern among the students was their ability to interact and network with other student groups.
Suggestions for improving communication between organizations included using networking sites, such as MySpace.com, Facebook.com and creating Listservs to reach student groups with similar interests.
"It's good to network and get volunteers," said Kate Geyer, a representative of Agora Crisis Center. "We can use different organizations to help each other. It would be helpful if maybe ASUNM had a MySpace page that students could see, too."
Sen. Jenny Ding said face-to-face contact needs to be a part of ASUNM's interaction with student groups.
"With all this technology, like cell phones and e-mail, the personal contact is lost," she said. "Each
senator should be assigned 20 groups to represent and get to know."
Vice President Matt Barnes said ASUNM will assign senators to specific organizations they will be responsible for
communicating with.
Students objected to the food service in the SUB, which does not allow events in the building to be catered by outside food vendors.
Barnes said the food contract for the SUB is up for bidding, and ASUNM will address the issue when applications start
coming in.
Student Jeremy Jaramillo said he was interested in getting more support from the student body for the United Way campaign.
"We get really good support in some areas and not so good in other," he said. "Student body support is almost nonexistent, even though the United Way supports programs like Agora and Popejoy events."
Student Frank Martin, a member of the Associated Students for Empowerment, said ASUNM is not doing enough to help the disabled community at UNM.
"You put up all those lights on Johnson Field and did nothing to make it more accessible," he said. "The disabled community at UNM is an invisible minority."
President Ashley Fate invited Martin to join ASUNM in Santa Fe to lobby for funding.
The senators also updated the audience on projects ASUNM has been working on, including striving for sustainability and continuing work on Johnson Field.
