I recently read a Daily Lobo article about the possibility of constructing new student housing at UNM and, like always, this article reinforced my belief that the current administration is wholly incompetent and, hey, also shows contempt for the student population.
This article centered on the current housing contractor, American Campus Communities (ACC), and how it is actively pursuing more student housing construction.
I thought to myself, ‘isn’t this like the tail wagging the dog?’ You would think that the situation would be the other way around, that the University would be projecting how many students are going to live on campus and then telling its housing contractor the size and type of dorms that are needed.
Anyone with an IQ higher than three knows that UNM is primarily a commuter university, and the Lottery Success Scholarship really enforces this concept. In order to afford a college education, a lot of students in the Albuquerque metroplex rely on the lottery scholarship to pay tuition while they live at home, saving money.
Lobo Development Corporation and friends think that they can convince more students to move on campus, where it will be more expensive for them to live all the way around. In addition to paying a lot for rent, students who live on campus will probably sign up for one of the overpriced meal plans (which is probably not as good as their mothers’ cooking) and have to pay for an overpriced parking permit in order to share a small-sized dorm room with someone else.
Another factor to take into account is that the economy is not getting better any time soon, so local area students who are currently in the dorms may have to move back home to make ends meet.
ACC states that it is also actively recruiting nontraditional students to live on campus. I do not think that it will work. Most nontraditional students are older and already have living arrangements off campus, and they know that it will probably cost way more money to move on campus.
In my opinion, the administration should actively be against building any new student housing on campus because it is not in the best interests of the students or the University.
It will cost a lot of money to build these new dorms. I wonder who is going to absorb that cost when all of these nontraditional and commuter students decide that dorm life is not for them.
The last time the University’s administration approved a construction project on a nonfactual basis was when it decided to spend several million dollars on renovating the biology building because it was sure that the public would approve the bonds to pay for it.
Well guess what, the public did not approve the bonds, and Schmidly and his roundtable of overpaid vice presidents were dumbfounded as to what to do next. They had started the project, were well into the renovation, and they had no money to pay for it.
As I read the article, I thought to myself, ‘it cannot get any worse for the students,’ but it does. The article stated that a lot of ASUNM senators were against ACC and their new housing because ACC does not provide the same compensation to their resident assistants (RAs) as UNM. I thought to myself, ‘wow, if there is an organization that treats students worse than the UNM administration, that is a bad omen.’
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It is my opinion that when the University entered an agreement with ACC, one of the main points should have been that the use of RAs should be consistent across UNM, and that ACC should hire and treat them as part of the University. Being an RA is a good way to help pay for college expenses.
Again, when the University signed the agreement with ACC, it should have had the students’ best interests in mind, but it didn’t. After being at UNM for a year, this really did not surprise me. Now I am wondering when the last time was that the University’s administration had the students’ best interests in mind when it made a decision.
