The administration needs to get it together and keep the school better maintained, whether the barrier is money, staffing or some other issue.
The article “Ted Chavez Hall Plagued by Maintenanwce, Custodial Concerns” was initially supposed to be a single article that encapsulated all of the issues on Main campus, but will instead be broken into installments by building because our reporter found so many health, safety and maintenance issues.
A used condoms that sits in a shower stall for more than two weeks, shower stalls that have been broken for more than two weeks and only four maintenance employees for seven campus locations are unacceptable.
Vice President of Finance and Operations Katherine Ulibarri seems more than willing to discuss the goings-on at CNM — provided it puts the school in a positive light. She happily gushed to a reporter for the Volume 18, Issue Five article “CNM to Purchase More Property” about buying a property on Oxford Street that has a nice outdoor space, but declined to comment when it came to problems on campus and instead directed us to the Marketing and Communications Office.
Perhaps it is as Director of the Marketing and Communications Office Brad Moore said: There is not enough funding coming from the right places to address these issues. If that is the case, administration members should be working with students to find solutions to these problems — some of which, like the used condom, are potential health risks.
“Community” may be in the name of the institution, and often a word included in public advertisements for the school and in campus-wide emails from President Kathie Winograd, but rather than embrace that label and allow the CNM community to work together toward a solution, administrators treat students as consumers and shut them out of the problems that are turning our school into a collection of run-down buildings.
A community is a collaborative process. Why are there not conversations about whether property should be purchased, how to best decide which positions should be filled in lean years and what is or is not an urgent health or safety concern?
Yes, the administration is certainly the steward of funds allocated to the college, but if we are a community, the voices of the community should at least have the opportunity to be heard.
4
