#new mexico state

[saddestfans]

FIRE HUGH FREEZE DOT COM

[bongaboi]

At New Mexico St, a meltdown that runs beyond basketball

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — Of all the troubling video made public over a year of crisis at New Mexico State – from the brawl involving basketball players to the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old, allegedly by one of those players, to the police interviews with the coach afterward – one 42-minute log of footage might best explain how the school is in the mess it is today.

In that video, captured on police body cam, an officer is interviewing the university’s $500,000-a-year chancellor, Dan Arvizu, and his wife, Sheryl Arvizu. The officer had been called to the couple’s house to resolve a dispute that came out of Sheryl’s suspicion her husband was having an affair with a staff member at New Mexico State.

Dan Arvizu denied the affair. Sheryl Arvizu ended up being booked into jail on a battery charge that was later dismissed. Officials at the school’s Office of Institutional Equity looked into the allegations for possible conflict-of-interest issues, though there was no report filed.

During these fraught days at New Mexico State, where the once-treasured men’s basketball program has been shelved for the season after that fatal shooting and a gruesome allegation of locker-room hazing, the Arvizu police video is a reminder of who is ultimately responsible at a university that has, in many eyes, become unhinged in areas well beyond basketball. The Associated Press spoke to more than a dozen people affiliated with the university, many of whom expressed deep concerns with leadership at the school. Some said they did not want their names used because they feared retribution. “People are embarrassed,” said Jamie Bronstein, a history professor who also serves as vice chair of NMSU’s faculty senate. “People feel terrible for the students.”

In a letter sent to “Our NMSU Community” after the AP published this story, Arvizu acknowledged that his family had been through “a deeply personal situation.”

“Importantly, there is no truth to the allegations made that evening,” the letter said. “It was a low point for me, and since that time, my wife and I have worked to rebuild our relationship. I am confident this matter has not impacted my ability to lead our university.”

Questions some people are asking on this 14,000-student campus, where some of the adobe-colored dorms and classroom buildings are a short walk from livestock barns, have as much to do with school leadership as they do with the basketball program.

There have been seven different presidents, interim presidents and chancellors over the past 15 years at the second-biggest university in New Mexico. In addition to its isolation — set near the jagged mountains of southern New Mexico, NMSU is some 400 miles from the nearest major media market in Phoenix — the school is unique in that its student body is 63% Hispanic and more than a quarter of the students are the first members of their family to attend college.

“What makes NMSU such a special place is the huge opportunity to change students’ and their families’ lives by increasing our students’ social mobility,” business professor Jim Hoffman said. “This is why excellent leadership, thoughtful decision making and wise use of (limited) resources are so important.”

No matter the disadvantages, New Mexico State has always been able to make a name for itself every March thanks to a men’s basketball program that traditionally thrives on the strength of players and coaches who don’t always take the traditional route to Division I. But this year, the program disintegrated.

The unraveling can be traced to an NMSU football game last Oct. 15 in which a handful of the school’s basketball players got into a brawl with students from rival New Mexico. Video of the melee shows junior forward Mike Peake among those throwing punches.

No police report was filed that night, and five weeks after the fight, the players headed to Albuquerque for one of the season’s most anticipated games, against the Lobos. It was there that Peake broke curfew and went to the dormitory complex of one of the students involved in the fight at the football stadium.

Video from the apartment parking lot shows Peake being attacked with a baseball bat before exchanging gunfire with the student, Brandon Travis. Both men fall. Peake was taken to the hospital with leg wounds that required surgery. Travis later died from his gunshot wounds. Peake, who was acting in self-defense, has not been charged with a crime. Police video shows Peake in a hospital bed after the shooting asking to get his gun back because “that’s my only weapon.” Guns are not permitted on New Mexico State’s campus or on school-related road trips.

The morning after the shootings, players and coaches were loaded onto a bus to head back to Las Cruces, only to be stopped on Interstate 25 by police, who were still piecing together details from the night before.

The Aggies continued to play for nearly three more months. On Feb. 12, Arvizu canceled the season after allegations surfaced about three players ganging up on a teammate in what a police report said included a possible incident of criminal sexual contact. Two days later, Arvizu fired the coach, Greg Heiar. The player who made the allegations said similar hazing incidents had been occurring since summer. Arvizu said he was never made aware of the hazing. School spokesman Justin Bannister said school policy calls for employees to report misconduct to the Title IX office and that the university is “looking at additional support systems” for the future.

At a news conference after those moves, the chancellor said he was sure the “despicable acts” and potentially illegal behavior were confined strictly to the basketball team.

“There will be consequences,” Arvizu said.

Both the shooting and hazing incidents are being sorted out by internal and third-party investigations. Some observers are skeptical they will ever get the full story.

“I feel that we’ve all been left in the dark,” said one longtime Aggies fan, Amy Rohr.

The chancellor’s notion that the problems have been walled off in the basketball program is hardly a consensus around campus.

Current and former employees the AP interviewed described scenarios in which top-level administrators refused to hold themselves or others accountable, both inside and outside the athletic department. One said the “guardrails” designed to protect students and faculty — from everything from retaliation for whistleblowing to sexual improprieties — had all but disappeared.

“Because there’s so much churn in our upper administration, we never get to the point of hammering out who is actually accountable for upholding policies,” Bronstein said.

In one instance, a lawsuit last year filed by a Jane Doe alleges a longtime professor with ties to the athletic department “harassed and groomed female students for years, coercing them into sexual relations and bragging about the same” while school officials looked the other way. The plaintiff alleges she was sexually assaulted by the professor.

Another case alleges that two professors who blew the whistle about hiring practices they claimed flouted human-resource policies had their complaints intercepted by an administrator involved in the hiring, who then pushed for disciplinary cases to be opened against those professors. One has been demoted from his deanship.

Bronstein and others told of the Office of Institutional Equity, which handles Title IX and other discrimination complaints and should have been on the front lines of the hazing allegations, as being marginalized, with administrators ignoring some recommendations produced by the office and putting others off.

In his letter, Arvizu said the school has added staff to the OIE, and that whistleblowers are protected under state law.

“And, under NMSU’s Administrative Rules and Procedures, retaliation is explicitly prohibited,” Arvizu wrote.

Some of the dissatisfaction among faculty was resolved last year, when President John Floros stepped down and Provost Carol Parker was fired in the wake of a resolution of no confidence submitted by the faculty senate.

Among the complaints in that resolution were allegations of misappropriation of funds, unethical hiring and promotion practices and a long list of consequences of the “broader impacts of systemic failure of leadership.”

Parker is currently suing the university. Floros was able to keep his $450,000-a-year salary. The approximately $950,000 in annual salary for Floros and Arvizu was nearly triple what former New Mexico Gov. Garry Carruthers made in his dual role as chancellor and president for five years ending in 2018.

Arvizu’s five-year contract runs out in June. In December, regents made the decision not to renew it, leaving NMSU to face the basketball crisis with no president, a provost position in flux and a lame-duck chancellor.

The athletic director’s job seems secure: When Arvizu dismantled basketball for the season, he went out of his way to back Mario Moccia, who is in his 10th year as AD.

One under-the-radar move the administrators made came in 2019 when they ended a policy that stated student-athletes would be dismissed if found guilty of (or pleaded no contest to) a felony. That allowed one player to remain on the team at the time the rules were changed. It also furthered New Mexico State’s reputation as a place where athletes and coaches get second chances — perhaps without accountability.

At his news conference, Arvizu defended the rules changes that led to the new policy, while Moccia defended his hiring record, conceding that “nobody bats a thousand.” The AD insisted the vetting process for Heiar was solid.

It was the first head-coaching job at a Division I school for the 47-year-old Heiar. Among those he had worked for over two decades as an assistant included Larry Eustachy, Will Wade, Gregg Marshall and Chris Jans. All have endured embarrassing episodes that cost them their jobs. Jans, who left New Mexico State for Mississippi State after last season, came to Las Cruces shortly after he was fired from Bowling Green when a video surfaced of him slapping an unidentified woman on the butt at a bar.

One of Heiar’s assistant coaches, Edmond Pryor, lasted less than three months after being arrested on allegations of forgery. Another of Moccia’s hires is women’s basketball coach Jody Adams, who was accused of being abusive toward players when she coached Wichita State.

For decades, though, New Mexico State has not been shy about taking risks to advance its sports programs. One of the program’s glory eras came in the 1990s when coach Neil McCarthy embroiled a team filled with junior-college transfers in an academic scandal that ended up costing him his job.

Even after he was fired, basketball kept putting this school on the map come March. The Aggies have been to March Madness 11 times since McCarthy left after the 1997 season, always as a double-digit seed with a reputation for giving the big boys trouble. Though the Aggies never moved away from taking players with riskier academic records, the school has not been charged with a major NCAA infraction since 2001.

Regardless, there won’t be any postseason this year, and it’s anybody’s guess as to who, or what, will be left from the team that was 9-15 when the hazing allegations arose and the season was called off. Two players quit shortly after the hazing allegations. Moccia said there would be basketball next season, though the status of the players remaining was up in the air.

“The entire program has caught on fire, and the fire has burned down everything, and all that’s left are the roots,” said Jim Paul, the former NMSU AD who fired McCarthy.

Christopher Hamilton, a freshman who was walking across campus the day Heiar’s firing came down, said the whole situation was “just disappointing, and it’s sad that it’s your school.”

He said he hoped to go to basketball games again someday. But on a recent Saturday, when the Aggies had been scheduled to play a home game at the Pan-Am Center, all anyone could see on the hardwood was the cartoon drawing of the school’s mascot at halfcourt: the mustachioed, gun-toting cowboy known as “Pistol Pete.”

AP reporter Susan Montoya Bryan contributed to this report.

[thecharters]

University of Maryland Women's Basketball and 2015 NCAA Tournament

University of Maryland Women’s Basketball and 2015 NCAA Tournament

The University of Maryland women’s basketball team are seeded #1 in their region, and began the 2015 NCAA tournament with a game against New Mexico State University at Xfinity Center in College Park, Maryland. It is unclear why Comcast decided to rename Comcast Center as Xfinity Center; we know who you are, we know you are opposed to Net Neutrality, bills that make sense, reasonable charges,…

[reasonsforhope]

Scientists have developed a new solar-powered system to convert saltwater into fresh drinking water which they say could help reduce dangerous the risk of waterborne diseases like cholera.

Via tests in rural communities, they showed that the process is more than 20% cheaper than traditional methods and can be deployed in rural locations around the globe.

Building on existing processes that convert saline groundwater to freshwater, the researchers from King’s College London, in collaboration with MIT and the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy Systems, created a new system that produced consistent levels of water using solar power, and reported it in a paper published recently in Nature Water.

It works through a process called electrodialysis which separates the salt using a set of specialized membranes that channel salt ions into a stream of brine, leaving the water fresh and drinkable. By flexibly adjusting the voltage and the rate at which salt water flowed through the system, the researchers developed a system that adjusts to variable sunshine while not compromising on the amount of fresh drinking water produced.

Using data first gathered in the village of Chelleru near Hyderabad in India, and then recreating these conditions of the village in New Mexico, the team successfully converted up to 10 cubic meters, or several bathtubs worth of fresh drinking water. This was enough for 3,000 people a day with the process continuing to run regardless of variable solar power caused by cloud coverage and rain.

[Note: Not sure what metric they're using to calculate daily water needs here. Presumably this is drinking water only.]

Dr. Wei He from the Department of Engineering at King’s College London believes the new technology could bring massive benefits to rural communities, not only increasing the supply of drinking water but also bringing health benefits.

“By offering a cheap, eco-friendly alternative that can be operated off the grid, our technology enables communities to tap into alternative water sources (such as deep aquifers or saline water) to address water scarcity and contamination in traditional water supplies,” said He.

“This technology can expand water sources available to communities beyond traditional ones and by providing water from uncontaminated saline sources, may help combat water scarcity or unexpected emergencies when conventional water supplies are disrupted, for example like the recent cholera outbreaks in Zambia.”

In the global rural population, 1.6 billion people face water scarcity, many of whom are reliant on stressed reserves of groundwater lying beneath the Earth’s surface.

However, worldwide 56% of groundwater is saline and unsuitable for consumption. This issue is particularly prevalent in India, where 60% of the land harbors undrinkable saline water. Consequently, there is a pressing need for efficient desalination methods to create fresh drinking water cheaply, and at scale.

Traditional desalination technology has relied either on costly batteries in off-grid systems or a grid system to supply the energy necessary to remove salt from the water. In developing countries’ rural areas, however, grid infrastructure can be unreliable and is largely reliant on fossil fuels...

“By removing the need for a grid system entirely and cutting reliance on battery tech by 92%, our system can provide reliable access to safe drinking water, entirely emission-free, onsite, and at a discount of roughly 22% to the people who need it compared to traditional methods,” He said.

The system also has the potential to be used outside of developing areas, particularly in agriculture where climate change is leading to unstable reserves of fresh water for irrigation.

The team plans to scale up the availability of the technology across India through collaboration with local partners. Beyond this, a team from MIT also plans to create a start-up to commercialize and fund the technology.

“While the US and UK have more stable, diversified grids than most countries, they still rely on fossil fuels. By removing fossil fuels from the equation for energy-hungry sectors like agriculture, we can help accelerate the transition to Net Zero,” He said.

-via Good News Network, April 2, 2024

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - September 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my new(ly repurposed) Patreon!

1. A beam of hope for North America’s most endangered sparrow

“Dozens of conservationists, gathered some distance away to avoid spooking the skittish sparrows, celebrated the [release of the 1000th captive-raised sparrow] in an unprecedented recovery program that in only a few years has doubled the bird’s wild population, from a mere 80 five years ago to some 200 today. […] “What we have achieved is the best case scenario.””

2. U.S. overdose deaths plummet, saving thousands of lives

“"In the states that have the most rapid data collection systems, we’re seeing declines of twenty percent, thirty percent," said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, an expert on street drugs at the University of North Carolina. […] According to Donaldson, many people using fentanyl now carry naloxone, a medication that reverses most opioid overdoses. He said his friends also use street drugs with others nearby, ready to offer aid and support when overdoses occur.”

3. Propagated corals reveal increased resistance to bleaching across the Caribbean during the fatal heat wave of 2023

“”[… Y]oung corals bred for restoration are a lot more resistant to bleaching under extreme levels of heat stress than the prevailing corals on the reef." [… Unlike with the previous propagation strategy, fragmentation, e]very time a population reproduces, new offspring receive newly mixed sets of genes through recombination, making them different from their parent colonies and thus enabling adaptation.”

4. Habitat Management Helps At-Risk Butterflies

“For a number of at-risk butterflies in the United States, habitat management can play an important role in keeping them from going extinct. [… “In] places where people are actively engaged with ways to manage the habitat, the butterflies are doing the best,” said Cheryl Schultz, a professor of conservation biology at Washington State University[….]”

5. Study: Protecting the ocean helps fight malnutrition

“[The study] found that fish catches in coral reefs could increase by up to 20 percent by expanding sustainable-use marine protected areas — that is, areas where some fishing is allowed with restrictions[, … and] that sustainable-use marine protected areas have on average 15 percent more fish biomass than non-protected areas. […] “Allowing regulated fishing in marine protected areas can support healthy fish populations, while also having a positive impact on the quality of life of surrounding communities.””

6. [FWS] Advances Effort to Create Urban Conservation Footprint in Tucson

““We want to continue to work together to create an urban footprint to improve access to nature, conserve habitats, and improve air and water quality.” […] The area provides habitat for several federally listed species, including southwestern willow flycatcher, western yellow-billed cuckoo, and Mexican garter snake. If protected, the area will also help connect critical habitat for jaguar and Chiracahua leopard frog.”

7. ‘Exciting’ solar breakthrough means energy can be kept in sustainable batteries that don’t overheat

“The technology is based on a specially designed molecule of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen that changes shape when it comes into contact with sunlight. These are common elements - providing an alternative to other technologies relying on scarce materials like lithium. […] A unique feature of the system is that the molecules also provide cooling in the photovoltaic cell[, which can store solar energy “for up to 18 years.”]”

8. Sea turtles make big comeback on sandy beaches at 2 British military bases in Cyprus

“[… The] number of nests surpass[ed] last year’s record count by nearly 25%, environmentalists said Tuesday. […] “The steep increase in turtle nests has been the result of a consistent, systematic ‘hands-off’ approach, together with enforcement efforts to minimize illegal, damaging activities on nesting beaches[….” D]aily patrols by volunteers ensure that aluminum cages set atop the nests remain in place to protect the turtles from predators like foxes and dogs.”

9. First ever photograph of rare bird species New Britain Goshawk

“The last documented scientific record of the bird is from 1969[….] Working closely with [“the Indigenous Mengen and Mamusi peoples”], WWF hopes to support local stewardship to safeguard the future of these incredible biodiversity hotspots through community-led conservation.”

10. Hospitals begin offering breakthrough radiation therapy for metastatic cancer tumors

“[First,] a patient is injected with a radioactive glucose (or sugar) tracer. The machine picks up the tracer in real time and in bright colors, [… then] reads a signal from the cancer cells breaking down the tracer. [… “The] machine is automatically and autonomously reacting and responding to those signals by shooting radiation back to their source[….]””

September 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[pangeen]

" Colorful Mornings " // © Austin Pedersen

[memenewsdotcom]

Senate dismisses Mayorkas impeachment

[thomaswaynewolf]

[filmap]

Love Lies Bleeding Rose Glass. 2024

Louisville Gun Club 208 Torcido Rd NW, Rio Rancho, NM 87144, USA See in map

See in imdb

[lonestarbattleship]

USS NEW MEXICO (BB-40), Flagship of the Pacific Fleet, passing through the Panama Canal. In the middle and upper west chamber of the Gatun locks. There are two other battleships at anchor in Gatun Lake, the background. She anchors in Gatun Lake while the other battleships make it through the other side of the canal and continue her transit the next day.

Photographed on July 25, 1919.

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command: NH 75719, NH 76551

[city-flag-tournament]

✯ Round 4 ✯ Match 13 ✯

The current flag of Kanepi Parish, Põlva County, Estonia

Propaganda:

None

vs.

The current flag of Roswell, New Mexico, United States

Propaganda:

None

Tournament Policies: ✯ Choose the flag that's more meaningful to you! ✯ Be respectful of place names and cultural symbols in your commentary! ✯ If you want to submit propaganda, you may do so at the submission form linked in the pinned post. It will only be included if it is submitted before the next post with that flag is drafted and will be included in all subsequent posts the flag is featured in.

[saddestfans]

CRY HARDER KID

[idkaguyorsomething]

Kidnappings, murders, crime rings, there’s all kinds of crimes for the boys to solve, even if this next case of theirs is gonna take them a bit out of their district.

¡Reblog and explain where you sent them and why in the tags!

[reasonsforhope]

"While tourists visiting Mexican beaches complain about piles of smelly seaweed, one Mexican gardener reckoned it was something like a gift.

The governments in places like Cancun have been required to clear away as much as 40,000 tons of sargassum seaweed, which smells like rotten eggs, but Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez is steering it away from the landfills and into a kiln, where he makes adobe-like blocks that pass regulation as a building material.

He started SargaBlock to market the bricks, which are being highlighted by the UN Development Program as a stroke of brilliance, and a sustainable solution to a current environmental problem.

His story begins back in 2015 when, like any experienced laborer, he found rich people were stuck with a job they didn’t want to do. In this case, it was cleaning up the sargassum on the beaches of the Riviera Maya.

Omar grew up in poverty, immigrated to the US as a child to become a day laborer, and eventually dropped out of school and became a substance abuser. The American dream never appealed to him as much as a “Mexican dream”—a mix of memories from his childhood and dreams of being a gardener back home, so he moved back.

His time feeling unwanted as an addict and immigrant gave him a unique perspective on the smelly seaweed.

“When you have problems with drugs or alcohol, you’re viewed as a problem for society. No one wants anything to do with you. They look away,” Omar told Christian Science Monitor in a translated interview.

“When sargassum started arriving, it created a similar reaction. Everyone was complaining, I wanted to mold something good out of something everyone saw as bad.”

The ecology and environment offices of Quintana Roo, the legislative area that includes the city of Cancun, approved the SargaBlocks for use, and similar organic-based blocks have been reckoned as being capable of enduring 120 years.

The UN Development Program selected Omar’s work to be featured in their Accelerator Lab global broadcast to alert the world of its value and ingenuity.

There are all kinds of naturally-occurring pollutants or burdens that could be used in construction, and the UNDP hoped that by sharing Omar’s vision of the future of the Caribbean’s sargassum problem, it would inspire others to act in similar ways.

Bricks and cement can be great sources to use up naturally-occurring material that’s dangerous or burdensome—like this Filippino community using the ash from volcanic eruptions to make bricks.

Omar has been fortunate enough to be able to donate 14 “Casas Angelitas,” or homes made of SargaBlock, to families in need, and seems to be exceedingly close to achieving his “Mexican dream.”"

-via Good News Network, 4/24/23

[misery-has-no-company-now]

Texas once unironically said "You've yeehawed your last yeehaw" and New Mexico has never let him live that down since, send post.