Considering record, UNM oversight welcome
Milan Simonich’s recent column (“Saving soccer is risky play for Dems,” Ringside Seat, Nov. 23), attempts to paint the Legislature’s desire to save the University of New Mexico soccer program as micromanaging. His column ran, coincidentally, on the same day as a front-page, sympathetic treatment by
The New Mexican of UNM President Garnett Stokes. Both pieces failed to capture the long-simmering frustration taxpayers and alumni, like me, have with UNM.
We’ve watched UNM make puzzling decisions, over and over, to cut successful academic and sports programs. When we go to the university to ask for wellresearched, thoughtful explanations for their actions, we are condescended to. When information is provided contrary to UNM’s perspective, it is disregarded. In this environment, it is nothing more than logical for the taxpayers who fund this institution to seek out their elected officials for help. What Speaker Brian Egolf and other legislators are doing by looking into UNM’s poor choices is responding to the pleas of their constituents. That is something we should not discourage.
Simonich, who usually writes passionately about good government, overlooks in his column UNM’s tawdry record of unqualified political hires, lobbyist excesses and violations of the Open Meetings Act. Who should be the watchdog when both the UNM administration and its regents behave so badly? I would argue the Legislature plays a justified role in conducting that oversight of UNM.
New Mexico has a bad habit of expecting less from its leaders and major institutions. Rising just above mediocrity seems too often an accomplishment. It would be refreshing to demand nothing but the best of the UNM president and the regents and require they explain fully how their actions will catapult us into the ranks of the best higher education institutions in the United States.
Even better would be to see an institution so convinced of its potential success and agenda that leaders shout their plans from the rooftops and try to win us over. But that just never seems to happen. Instead we are left settling for less. Simonich wants to give the regents a break because they made the rare “tough decision” on UNM athletics. Wouldn’t we rather be commending them for making the even rarer correct decision?
It’s hard to understand the core values of an educational institution that so callously sends student athletes packing with little consideration of their academic or athletic goals. My own children watch UNM’s recent mistreatment of men’s soccer players (athletes with excellent academic records) and ask me, “Why would I go to UNM if they treat their students like that?” That’s a question UNM desperately needs to answer directly before the public and the Legislature — without the help of Simonich and The New Mexican.