National Organ Donation Month comes close to home

By: Shaya Rogers, Features Reporter | Photo By: Jamison Wagner

April is National Organ Donation Month, a time to think about the people across the nation, and on campus, who are in desper­ate need of a donor.

Elementary Education major Kimberly Wagner is in the final stage of Polycystic Kidney Disease and has been on the list for a new kidney since April 2010, she said.

The disease has no known cure and causes multiple cysts to form on the kidneys, which can kill a patient who does not receive a transplant. It is passed down from parent to child, she said.

“The cysts basically take over the kidney. My mom had it; it’s an inherited disease so my children have a 50 percent chance of having it,” she said.

Wagner, who is related to CNM Chronicle staff reporter Jamison Wagner, was diagnosed with PKD when she was 32, she said.

“Mine are twice the size of a normal person’s kidneys, just because of the cysts,” she said. Her family has been supportive through the years and have even offered their kidneys for donation, she said.

“My daughter and my husband have both tried to be live donors, because you only need one kidney, but they can’t because of health issues of their own,” she said.

National Organ Donation Month is a great opportunity for the CNM community to become educated on the need for donors, she said.

There are many parts of the body that can be donated, through both live and posthumous donations, she said.

“I’m a donor. They can’t take my kidneys, obviously, but if I died tomorrow they could take my corneas, my heart, my lungs, my skin, so all of these things can help someone,” Wagner said.

This month honors donators and creates a national platform to help others understand the specifics and to clarify any misconceptions about donating, she said.

“Sometimes there’s this little urban myth that if you’re a donor, paramedics won’t do everything and it’s not true. That would be silly,” she said.

According to organ­donor.gov, 117,972 people are waiting for an organ. Eighteen people per day will die waiting for an organ. One donor can save up to eight lives.

Although it does require a visit to the hos­pital and some time off work, the members of the donation community try to make it as easy as possible, she said.

“If there’s a live donor, it doesn’t cost them any­thing, it’s all covered by the patient who needs the transplant,” she said.

Many people who are able to donate do not because they may not know anyone close to them who needs a dona­tion, she said.

“I know a lot of times, we are so busy with our own lives we don’t think about it, but it gives you the opportunity to find out how this affects some­body,” she said.

The easiest way to help those in need today is to become an organ donor, she said.

“Check that box when you get your driver’s license, or if you already have a driver’s license, you just go online and fill out their little form and print it off and keep it with your license,” she said.

For more informa­tion about organ donation, visit nmdonor.org.

By: Daniel Johnson, Investigative Reporter

Dominic Trujillo, a Health Science major and work study employee in the BIT offices, said he is honored to be recognized as Work Study Employee of the Year.

The title, which was bestowed upon Trujillo on April 12 at the work study appreciation luncheon, is given to one student employee annually, and Trujillo’s supervisor Elaine Sanchez said the staff could not be more proud.

“It is cool to be recognized since I help a lot of people in and out of the office,” Trujillo said.

Sanchez said Trujillo was nomi­nated because he goes above and beyond to help students and staff.

When students are lost or need assistance, Dominic is willing to walk them to other buildings to find what it is they are looking for, she said.

“He has a unique way of staying calm and cool in any type of situation,” she said.

He is always trust­worthy, reliable and extremely dependable in the office, she said.

Trujillo said the workload can vary from difficult to easy, but everything he does has to be on time and done accurately, he said.

Trujillo said that his co-workers deserve credit for their support.

He feels all of the women he works with are like office moms who help him to be his best, he said.

“They all make sure that I am doing my home­work, going to class and that I’m pushing and working hard to get out of being a work-study so that I can move on to bigger and better things in my life,” he said.

He plans to continue to be a work-study until he completes his degree and then move on to the Nursing program so he can continue to help people, he said.

“I figure I’ll be work­ing at CNM for at least another two years, unless they try to keep me longer,” he said.

When he does leave, Trujillo will be missed, Sanchez said.

“We keep threaten­ing to tape him to the chair and kidnap him so he can stick around for longer and we have be trying to con­vince him to pick out a couple more degrees he could try to go for, so we could have him work for us a few more years,” she said.

By: Jamison Wagner, Staff Reporter

Lucille Cordova, Liberal Arts gradu­ate, is working with the Southwest Research and Information Center to raise awareness of the dangers of highly toxic nuclear waste being dumped at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, she said.

Cordova is in charge of creating public awareness events for the Center to help the community become better informed of what is going on at the waste plant and, if they choose, get involved, she said.

According to wipp.energy.gov, the plant started receiving waste in 1999 and is designed to handle low- to mid-level radioactive waste, rather than the high-level waste that is being sent there.

Don Hancock, Nuclear Waste Program director at SRIC, said the WIPP is not designed to handle nuclear waste that comes from the developing of mate­rials for atomic bombs or the waste from nuclear power plants.

The Department of Energy has been trying to solve the issue of heavy con­tamination from leaking waste barrels at the Hanford, Washington nuclear waste site, and they are trying to change the law so that DOE can transfer nuclear waste from the Hanford site to WIPP, but this will not resolve the problem, he said.

Nearly two dozen nuclear facilities have unloaded waste at WIPP, but Hanford waste is not authorized there, accord­ing to hanfordwatch.org.

From the time of the Manhattan project, New Mexico has been heavily involved in the develop­ment of nuclear weapons and dumping of waste, Cordova said.

The WIPP site is not suited for this kind of waste because not only is there drilling for oil nearby, but WIPP is less than seven miles from the Pecos River.

If there is any mistake in storing the waste, the consequences could be severe for the local envi­ronment, he said.

“This is potentially dangerous to the work­ers handling the waste as well as the environment, said Hancock.

When workers were handling this waste in the past at Rocky Flats in Colorado, it was not secured properly, and they inhaled the chemicals which led to a few thousand work­ers getting severe lung disease, he said.

Since the 1940s, the government has used New Mexico as a place to do things out of the national eye, she said.

“I personally feel that this is a bit of an envi­ronmental racism issue. Even now, people don’t hesitate to say, ‘well let’s send our waste to New Mexico,’” said Cordova.

For more information, visit no2wipp.org, sric.org and wipp.energy.gov

Part-time instructor dissatisfied with work conditions

By: Jyllian Roach, Editor-In-Chief

A recent part-time faculty survey appeared to show quite a bit of discon­tent from part-time instructors.

The survey was given to the 727 part-time faculty members to help the CNM Employees Union gain a better understanding of issues faced by part-time instructors, Monie Arfai, part-time CHSS instructor and vice president of part-time fac­ulty for the union, said.

“We are going to have a contract negotiation to raise the standards of the contract and we just wanted to know what they want,” Arfai said.

A total of 302 part-time instructors responded to the survey, roughly 42 percent of part-time faculty, many of whom had negative things to say about the way part-time faculty is treated by those in power on campus.

About 54 percent of respondents said that teaching was their main source of income, but only 23 per­cent of respondents felt that they had job security.

Further, 46 percent said that CNM did not offer competitive pay to part-time faculty, while 29 percent felt that it was competitive.

“I am making what I made in 1990- 94 elsewhere,” one respondent wrote.

Eighty-three percent of survey respondents also said that additional pay should be added for instructors who are involved on committees and in other campus activities like the graduation ceremonies.

“Since full timers are paid more than twice our rate, I think we should see some compensation for extra work,” one respondent commented.

About 44 percent of respondents felt that quality performance was not valued or rewarded on campus. Fifty-two percent of respondents have worked here for six or more years.

“Hard to answer; I suspect that it is valued, but not rewarded,” one respondent said.

Part-time faculty office space was another point of contention. About 36 percent of those surveyed believed the workspace to be good, but exactly 50 percent felt that it was not adequate.

Even those who liked their office space agreed that Main campus part-time faculty offices were below standard.

“We call the Main campus offices for PT Faculty the ‘North Korean Barracks,’” one respondent said.

Another commented that the city kennels would be more suitable than the portable offices on Main campus.

In hiring practices, respondents said that years of being employed and quality of work or type of degrees did not seem to matter when a full-time position became available.

“I have applied every time there is an open­ing, but I never get an interview. I feel there is some bias against moving part timers to full time at CNM. I have talked to other part timers and the same thing happens to them,” one respondent wrote.

Another respondent said that hiring practices in their school seemed to border on illegal, but did not specify as to how.

Arfai said that the survey was still being reviewed by the union and that no determination would be made yet about which of these issues would be raised during the contract negotiations in September, 2013.

Only 28 percent of respondents were union members.