A.S. approves $1,000 Family Emergency Fund

By Matthew Gonzalez STAFF WRITER

The Associated Students held their first official meeting of the spring semester on Wednesday. Among the points discussed, the board passed a family emergency fund for Francesca Ramona Arriaga, a San Jose State University nursing junior who died on Dec. 8, 2022.

multiple policies when giving Nichols medical attention, according to a Monday NBC article.

On Friday, the Memphis Police Department released body cam footage of Nichols’ death which showed officers beating Nichols after he was dragged out of his car.

The video showed police officers pulling over Nichols and attempting to remove him from his vehicle. Officers then pulled Nichols out of his car as he repeatedly told them,“I just want to get home,” according to a Friday New York Times article.

The officers pepper-sprayed Nichols while one of them shot a taser at him before he escaped and ran on foot.

The officers pursued Nichols for eight minutes before catching him in a suburban

Nina Chuang A.S. President

“I think that it’s important that the school can show support,” said Dillon Gadoury, A.S. director of communications.

“I think that it’s awesome that

Associated Students also has this backup, emergency family budget in cases where there is tragedy on campus.”

A.S. President Nina Chuang said providing the fund plays an integral role in respectfully acknowledging the experiences San Jose State students share.

“I think that it’s really important for us to take a position of empathy and respect and honor of the students and their experience here at San Jose State,” Chuang said.

The family emergency fund will allocate $1,000 to the Arriaga family.

A.S. Vice President Ikaika Rapanot said the fund was also used by the board in 2021 after the death of Saul Schrader, a junior SJSU business major. It was also used in October 2022 when freshman football player Camdan McWright died.

“I knew of this emergency fund as we have used it in the past, with people such as Camdan McWright and Saul Schrader who unfortunately passed away,” Rapanot said. “I figured as a member of our community in San Jose State, that it was only right to do our due diligence to help the family, as much as we can.”

Leadership

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Teniente-Matson led a successful transformation of the university becoming a designated Hispanic Serving Institution, according to her Texas A&M biography.

A Hispanic Serving Institution is a designation for eligible schools when at least 25% of its full-time undergraduate students are Hispanic, according to the Department of Education’s “Hispanic-Serving Institutions” webpage.

On Jan. 17, at the National Day of Racial Healing event held on campus, TenienteMatson said the Texas A&M University she worked at had been created in an area which

Memphis

Continued from page 1 had previously been redlined, making the communities around the university primarily Latino and poor. article by Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

“That’s where I chose to live,” she said at the same event. “I insecurity in their livelihoods.”

Teniente-Matson said she feels like she had a lifechanging experience leading excellence that values equity and inclusion,” according to the commission’s equity statement webpage.

Business administration junior, Alexandra Puga, said it’s nice to see someone like her in that type of position.

She said she thought it was cool to hear TenienteMatson talking about supporting first-generation and underrepresented students, but still is awaiting to see the President’s plans for the future.

“I’m just waiting to see, like, how it plays out,” Puga said.

Redlining is the discriminatory practice of systematically denying services – like loans or mortgages –to residents of certain areas based on their ethnicity or race according to an April 2022 neighborhood near his home where they tackled and began beating him.

The video showed officers repeatedly punching Nichols in the head, with one officer kicking him so hard that he nearly fell.

The footage also shows one of the officers using his baton to strike Nichols as he laid on the ground.

Throughout the nearly three-minute beating, Nichols is shown putting his hands near his face to cover up strikes before one officer hits him three times while standing behind him, and Nichols eventually collapses to the ground.

Nichols was pronounced dead at the hospital three days after being apprehended by the police. Nichols’ cause of death was from “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” according to a Monday CNN article.

Shortly after the officers were charged, the Memphis Police Department disbanded the Street Crimes Operations

Meeting

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He said, while he didn’t know Arriaga personally, her death not only saddens him, but deeply affects the entire SJSU community.

“We are all part of a larger spectrum of San Jose State students so whenever we lose one of us, you know, it impacts us all very deeply,” Rapanot said. “Whatever we can do, especially in the positions of power that we have, the authority that we have, we have to do things for the betterment of our community.” built the house in that same community so that I could be reminded on a daily basis of the importance of serving students, and serving families who are reliant on the bus, or might be unhoused, or may have food to Restore Peace to Our Neighborhoods Unit (SCORPION), the unit the officers belonged to.

Chuang said she wanted to make it known that the death of someone in the SJSU community adds another layer of complexity to the grieving process for students, and said she is working to make sure conversations about those troubles are being had.

“In the process of listening intently to the family of Tyre Nichols, community leaders and the uninvolved officers who have done quality work in their an institution in a previously redlined community.

At Texas A&M, TenienteMatson created the President’s Commission on Equity. The commission was charged with creating “a culture of country to protest Nichols’ killing.

Lawmakers in San Jose and the greater Bay Area released statements condemning the actions of the Memphis Police Department.

“As the Chief of Police for the San Jose State University Police Department, I condemned the Memphis police officers’ actions and said the city will continue to hold its officials accountable. assignments, it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit,” the Memphis Police Department said in a statement released on Saturday.

“I am outraged that our Black neighbors, friends and family continue to experience violence at the hands of officers who choose to abuse their power . . . San Jose is equally committed to holding accountable public servants who abuse their power. I pray that Tyre’s family and our community can heal and find peace,” Mahan said in a Friday statement.

A GoFundMe for Nichols has raised just over $1.2 million as of Monday night. Nichols leaves behind a 4-yearold son.

Following the charging of the five officers, groups gathered around the am deeply saddened to announce there has been another wrongful death of an African American male at the hands of law enforcement officers,” said SJSU chief of police Michael Carroll in a campus wide email on Friday.

San Jose Mayor, Matt Mahan,

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for Francesca’s family but also for us as college students processing death at this age in our life is something that I’ve recently been talking with administrators about the realities of what that is and the hardship of that,” Chuang said.

Gadoury said, although A.S. couldn’t physically support the Arriaga family, having the opportunity to aid them monetarily was a privilege and embodies the A.S. mission to strengthen the Spartan community.

“I think that it’s great that we have the opportunity to even have this backup, worst case scenario $1000,” Gadoury said. “And I know money isn’t everything and I know that showing up to support this family physically and in-person could be even more powerful, but at the least through everything that we do, money can help out in ways whether it’s funeral costs whether it’s bringing family together, for whatever reason a family uses it.”

Gadoury said responding to tragedies swiftly has been a prevalent topic among the board and that their collective willingness to have hard dialogue bolsters effective decisionmaking.

“One of our biggest board goals we talked about this year is to immediately address controversy, emergency and anything in-between on our campus and we’re fairly a very bold board,” he said. “And I think that makes us really effective because we can have hard conversations.”

The A.S. Board of Directors approved:

The Student Election Commission and elections timeline.

The Family Emergency Fund for nursing junior Francesca Ramona Arriaga.

Resolution in Honor of former Interim President, Steve Perez.