Paola Garcia

ASNMSU Senate convenes to discuss student affairs and campus initiatives on Feb. 6, 2025.

The 68th Senate of the Associated Student of New Mexico State University met on Thursday, Feb. 6 and discussed lowering the amount future ASNMSU candidates can spend on their campaigns. This move caused controversy amongst several senators.

In the past, ASNMSU candidates were able to spend up to $1,500 to help offset costs associated with their campaign efforts. Senators could use the funds to help with the cost of printing flyers, taking professional photos and other materials needed to help promote their cause. Sen. Awlen Salazar was the senator who moved to lower the spending limit to $1,000. His move caused some concerns among his senate colleagues.

Sen. Aya Alsheikh and Gage Anderson were among the top two senators who voiced their opposition to the spending limit.

“I haven’t spent a single penny on my campaign last year and I got the highest number of votes in the Arts and Sciences College,” Alsheikh said. “It doesn’t make sense why we’re lowering it. You can spend whatever you want, I’ll spend whatever I want. It’s a matter of whoever works harder for your vote. So I’m really not in favor of this vote.” 

In addition, Anderson shared his opinion to the bill, where he believed the association should raise the limit rather than lower it.

“I think in the interest of being proportional, it would make sense to add $500 and make it $2,000 [the limit] than to lower it by $500 because the budget for senators is $500 for campaign,” Anderson argued. “This seems like a really arbitrary change. And if by the comments made by the chief elections officer are to be understood, it was kind of just if you want to write it, you can…I fail to see the logic behind this, other than, like, it’s a vibes thing.” 

Among the senators who supported the bill were Sen. Aaren Ortiz-Ulibarri and Sen. Wyatt Ziehe. They both viewed the bill as a way to keep money from dominating NMSU student politics.

“If you disagree with this, I would really appreciate to hear your reasoning behind that…I feel like the argument of saying that oh, well, it’s just money.  There shouldn’t be a cap whatsoever.  It just doesn’t make any sense to me,” Ortiz-Ulibarri said.  “To put that into perspective, $1,500, that’s like two months worth of pay for a lot of students.” 

Ziehe voiced his support for the bill with similar reasoning for it being passed.  

“We all know politics is a rich persons game, right? And I think that we should take steps to eliminate that,” Ziehe said. “I know there was a lot of discussion two weeks ago about opening ASNMSU to the public.  If you’re up for opening ASNMSU to the public, I assume you would be for this bill. If you don’t put a limit on it, it’s just whoever has the most resources is going to win.  And the presenting senator has made it mailable, something we can adjust.” 

This prompted Sen. Salazar to defend his bill, where he cited  that by not having caps or limits on spending can pose a threat to student politics. 

“Money should not have a place in politics and this radical idea of eliminating the cap and just letting senators, presidential candidates spend however much money they want, I think, is dangerous rhetoric for you to speak on as a senator, as a student, like it is insane to me,” he said.  “I don’t even know why this is such a controversial bill.  I might be biased because I wrote the bill, but I just don’t know why this is such a problem.” 

Even with the energetic debate, sub-bill 199 passed with 21 votes in its favor and 5 votes against it. 

Elections packet rule revisited: 

As part of reviewing the new elections packet, Resolution 16 effectively banned Corbett Center Student Union as a campaign ground for all ASNMSU candidates in the fall of 2024. This caused another round of debate, centered around Corbett Center being a vital location for students to campaign at to try and get votes. Sen. Dylan Ortega and Hebah Alhalholy primarily contributed to the argument. 

“With us moving the amount of money that you can spend down, it would only make sense to increase the amount of places that you can campaign,” Ortega argued.  “This last fall, there was a total of 392 votes.  The previous fall when campaigning in Corbett was allowed, 766, almost doubled.  I think the numbers speak for themselves.” 

Alhalholy supported the resolution, where she cited a similar argument that Corbett Center is not just an important place for votes, but also the only place to get them. 

“I ran in the fall, and it was like, nearly impossible to find any students, like anywhere,” Alhalholy said.  “It just doesn’t make sense at all…We’re all about putting ourselves out there and nobody knows what ASNMSU is. I’m sorry but nobody knows who we are, what we do, or what senators even are. I bet you could go ask a student ‘do you know what ASNMSU is?’ and they’d say no.” 

Even with the debate, the resolution passed and Corbett Center remained banned.  This was not the only dramatic action of the senate session though. Before the final announcements, Sen. Salazar was removed from the senate floor by Sergeant at Arms Kolby Taylor for irrelevant questioning right before the senate adjourned. 

Sen. Awlen Salazar removed from Senate floor: 

Towards the end of the meeting, Sen. Lauren Hunter, who is also the Student Advocacy Board (SAB) representative and a College of Health, Education and Social Transformation senator, introduced Resolution 20, which supports the campus safety improvements that are outlined in the 2025 Capital Outlay Project. SAB proposed this project to the to the New Mexico Legislature this legislative session.

Salazar proceeded to ask questions to Hunter, citing he wanted clear answers regarding SAB and the 2025 Capital Outlay Project and the leadership involved both from the Student Advocacy Board and the ASNMSU executive branch.

“I’ve heard a lot of stuff; I do not like to engage myself in ‘she said, he said’, so I want to hear it from the source — from an SAB member,” Salazar said.

Hunter stated that the Student Advocacy Board was not informed about the 2025 Capital Outlay Project topic until winter break in late 2024. She then stated that the resolution was supposed to be written by the fifth senate meeting of the semester — held in October 2024.

She continued with how she felt regarding ASNMSU leadership from the student executive department.

“The leadership was poor,” Hunter said. “There was no communication between the two people in charge. There was no communication to the members. The one Senate representative — which was me — was left out of the emails. I did not get the one-pager. I did not get the information.”

For context, the ASNMSU executive department comprises of a series of departments and is run under President Ala Alhalholy and Vice President Elida Miller for the 2024-2025 year. Hunter said President Alhalholy and Director of Governmental Affairs, Michael Baca, left her out of the emails.

When Salazar asked Hunter if she knew if any other people who are involved in SAB felt “the same way”, Vice President Miller interrupted his line of questioning and stated it was not relevant to the scope of the resolution. She then said Salazar could retain his time, as long as his questioning was not rooted in opinion.

“For the people that lobbied with the Capital Outlay Project, did you notice any problems with the Capital Outlay Project itself?” Salazar asked.

Vice President Miller then banged her gavel towards Salazar to stop his line of questioning.

“Sergeant at Arms Taylor, please remove Senator Salazar from the floor,” Miller prompted.

A live video stream then shows Salazar packing up his things and leaving the senate floor. Livestreams are required for public governing bodies, as per the New Mexico Open Meetings Act, which the association has been scrutinized in the past for violating.  

The moment Sen. Salazar was removed from the floor can be viewed on the official ASNMSU livestream at the 4:28:00 mark.

Salazar told The Round Up he has no hard feelings towards Miller, but still felt that the answers he was looking for were important to disclose.

“I wanted transparency because the student body deserves it,” he said. “I felt that my message was censored when I was trying to get it across and unfortunately I was removed from the senate floor. I have no resentment towards the vice president whatsoever. I respect her decision, I respect her authority and I respect her. However, I still stand firm with my belief that I had the best intent.”