DAILY LOBO new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
MONDAY October 13, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 39
Student leaders seek sex crime response reform By Marielle Dent The University’s student governments are working to change the way UNM deals with sexual assault on campus. The Associated Students of the University of New Mexico and the Graduate and Professional Student Association proposed Friday that UNM be proclaimed a Start by Believing campus at this month’s Board of Regents meeting.
Start by Believing campaign endorsed by ASUNM, GPSA
`Start by Believing is a public awareness campaign designed by End Violence Against Women International to change the way people respond to reports of sexual assault and rape. The training goals of the program are to change campus culture to support and encourage victims who come forward, and to collaborate effectively with existing and future partnerships, said ASUNM Vice President Jenna Hagengruber.
“Most people report at least to a friend or family member, and this initiative is about changing their first responses,” said Amber Dukes, chair of GPSA’s Equity and Inclusion committee. “Instead of asking ‘were you dancing provocatively?’ or ‘what were you wearing?’, it’s to start by listening to them and believing them. And the rest of the process will start to take care of itself.” The campaign would become one of many UNM already has
in place to increase awareness and aid sexual assault victims. Two women from the Women’s Resource Center have trained about 10,000 students and staff members on how to handle sexual assault since July, and the newly created Sexual Misconduct and Assault Response Team has multiple services available to victims, Hagengruber said. Victims of sexual assault can get help on campus at SHAC and the Women’s Resource Center, but it
is recommended that they receive testing and counseling from the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners Collaborative located downtown on Silver. SANE nurses are specially trained to deal with those sorts of events, Dukes said. “‘Start by Believing’ is just really our way of saying, ‘if (sexual assault) does happen, you need to come forward and we believe you. If you don’t come forward the perpetrator could do
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Sergio Jiménez / Daily Lobo / @SXfoto
New Mexico sophomore defensive back Jadon Boatright hangs his head after the game against San Diego State at University Stadium on Friday. The Lobos fell 24-14 to the Aztecs.
Sleep apnea sufferers may soon breathe easier By Lauren Topper
Oneida Aragon awoke in the middle of the night to a disturbing silence: Her husband was not breathing. Again. Worried, she elbowed him in the side. He roused just enough to inhale deeply, then fell back to sleep. She would do this three more times that night. Aragon said her husband suffers from sleep apnea — a condition distinguished by infrequent breathing during deep sleep that, according to the National Sleep Foundation, afflicts more than 18
million American adults. Apart from extreme fatigue, sleep apnea can also cause heart disease. The laboratory of UNM professor Dr. Nancy Kanagy may have found a way to treat the heart disease component. She was recently the first to identify, in an animal model, two main players in sleep apnea’s damaging cardiovascular effects — endothelins and hydrogen sulfide — which could provide promising treatment options, she said. Endothelins and hydrogen sulfide have opposite roles within the body. Endothelins are potent vasoconstrictors – in other words, they narrow
blood vessels, obstructing blood flow and leading to high blood pressure. Conversely, hydrogen sulfide opens blood vessels, a process known as vasodilation. Kanagy said she found that endothelins quickly increased in a model of sleep apnea, while hydrogen sulfide production was decreased — a recipe for high blood pressure. Sleep apnea is typically caused by blockage of the airway in the area of the throat that connects the mouth and nose to the lungs. People with severe sleep apnea can have their breathing interrupted more than 30 times an hour, or every other minute,
for two to 20 seconds at a time, Kanagy said. As in Aragon’s story, sleep apnea is often discovered by an observer, such as a spouse, who notices that an individual is breathing irregularly. This is a concept with which Kanagy has first-hand experience, as she diagnosed her own husband after studying the disorder for her research, she said. “If you’ve ever been around someone that has sleep apnea, you can hear that their airway is collapsing, which is the most frequent form of sleep apnea: obstructive sleep
apnea. So when you go into REM sleep, you lose all muscle tone — muscle tone that is holding the upper airway open,” Kanagy said. “People with sleep apnea have a narrower airway than normal and often have other structural features of the airway making it susceptible to collapse when the muscle tone goes away during REM sleep.” When the airway is no longer open the body continues trying to breathe, but oxygen cannot make its way into the lungs. “When people quit breathing, their oxygen saturation levels are
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