Safety walk set aside for sake of panties

Attention UNM: Erase the Take Back the Campus event from your agenda. It has been postponed to make room for the Undie Run.
The campus safety walk, organized in response to the Feb. 15 stabbing on campus, will now take place next semester, possibly in October, said ASUNM Senator Zoila Alvarez.

“When it came down to the wire there was just a lot of other events that we did not want to conflict with their attendance, and we didn’t want them to conflict with our attendance,” she said. “The administration responded to the situation quite quickly. We feel it’s OK to just go ahead and postpone it for the fall when we can get a good turnout and reach out to new students.”

The Women’s Resource Center and ASUNM organized the event, Alvarez said.

“I thought that it was important to raise awareness among the students about how to be safe and about what safety precautions were already available on campus,” Alvarez said. “A lot of times students don’t know about the services that are available to them,” she said.
The UNM Collegiate Chapter of the American Marketing Association is hosting the second Undie Rock ‘n’ Run today at Johnson Field. The Undie Rock ‘n’ Run is an event where participants shed their clothes and run one mile through main campus in their underwear to help collect clothing for charity.

The postponement is for the best, said Sandrea Gonzales, WRC director, because it allows for more planning and ensures a greater turnout.
“We are focused on continuing the energy of trying to create safety on this campus, but we are booked solid at the moment,” she said. “It’s going to involve more people and we have more planning time, it will be better because we have more time to involve the community.”

UNMPD Spokesman Robert Haarhues said the Take Back the Campus will be more relevant in the fall.

“I think it’s better to do it before school starts next semester,” he said. “People are getting ready to pack up their stuff and leave for the summer. Things really calm down around here during the summer, at least for us it really slows down.”

Haarhues said safety is important but that UNM is generally a pretty safe place.
“We initially stepped up our patrol after the stabbing but we have pretty much gone back to the status quo now since we are all aware of what’s going on,” he said. “Our campus is pretty safe, aside from the stabbing. That was just an anomaly.”

The event is still slated to occur, said Summer Little, WRC program manager, because campus unity is essential in making campus a positive environment.

“It gives us some sense of responsibility for one another. We are this UNM family and we share this campus. If it is safe for one of us, it needs to be safe for all of us,” she said. “There will be a definite continuation with the idea and partnership for us with ASUNM. We are excited.”

In the meantime, concerned students can head over to the WRC for any information on safety, Little said.
“We’ve been focused on safety issues all semester long, especially organizing safety presentations,” she said. “We are always about distributing information about safety. It is really our No. 1 priority always.”