wall street President Donald J. Trump’s
administration comprised of Wall Street establishment
LTC SHOW Livingston Theatre Company’s American Idiot starts rocking this weekend
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MEN’S BASKETBALL Rutgers hits the road for Northwestern after loss to Purdue
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WEATHER Sunny skies all day High: 44 Low: 29
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Student Assembly charges 2 members with election fraud Bushra Hasan staff writer
The Rutgers University Student Assembly’s (RUSA) elections committee has accused two assembly members of engaging in election fraud, but the committee’s evidence may be limited. The two assembly members who were charged are School of Arts and Sciences sophomore Vladimir Carrasco, who also serves as the public relations chair for RUSA, and School of Arts and Sciences first-year student Jessica Resnick, who serves as the Livingston at-large representative. Carrasco said he was initially confronted about this incident on Feb. 2 by School of Arts and Sciences senior Anish Patel, the head of the elections committee, who claimed he was engaging in “pre-campaigning.” On Feb. 6, both Resnick and Carrasco received a written charge through email accusing them of election fraud. Carrasco said that he found the change in story unsettling, considering this is a serious matter. An excerpt of the letter says, “The Elections Committee has sole jurisdiction over matters of campaigning and candidacy, and has deemed the below actions to be a case of potential election fraud. No formal
The Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA) reportedly charged two of its members with engaging in “pre-campaigning.” Standing rules give the elections committee jurisdiction over all election-related matters. Nikhilesh De candidacy procedure or qualifications, or endorsements have been adopted, and as such, the below actions convey fraudulent information to student organizations.” The elections committee does indeed have jurisdiction over election matters, as stated in the RUSA standing rules. The RUSA standing rules say, “Election of representatives for
the Professional Schools & Residential Colleges shall be handled by those organizations, unless other wise requested by the Executive Board of an organization, in which case it would be handled by the RUSA Elections Committee.” But there is no documentation regarding how to handle infractions during the elections.
Adeel Ahmed, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, serves as RUSA’s off-campus caucus chair and commuter student association representative. He said, “ ...not only is there no rule in the constitution or the standing rules, the rules they’re governing by are under the assumption that the elections are currently taking place,” which they currently are not.
Carrasco said that if he is not currently a candidate, the elections committee has no jurisdiction over his actions, and cannot judge his campaign because according to the committee, he has no recognized campaign and they are setting a double standard. “If I’m not a candidate, they not only have no right to judge my actions nor See fraud on Page 5
Rutgers faculty joins ‘Academics United’ to support immigrants Nikhilesh De correspondent
Students and faculty gathered in the Fiber Optics building on Feb. 16 to discuss President Donald J. Trump’s travel ban. Participants voiced their demands to Rutgers administrators. Nikhilesh De
Nearly 75 faculty members and students stopped by “Academics United,” an effort to explain the impact of President Donald J. Trump’s travel ban on academia Thursday afternoon in the Fiber Optic Materials Research building on Busch campus. The event was a platform for affected faculty members to discuss their concerns, as well as for the group to share a specific list of demands they have for the Rutgers administration, said Mohsen Ghassemi, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Engineering. The Rutgers event is part of a nationwide movement of University faculty members discussing the impact the travel ban has had on their institutions. “The goal of ‘Academics United’ was to show solidarity with all the people who are affected (by Trump’s executive order), especially all those people in academia
who were affected directly or indirectly,” he said. “This affects not just those who are from these countries, it affects faculty members who cannot send their students to conferences, or who cannot travel outside the country.” The point of the seminar is to add another level of narratives to the dialogue that erupted in the wake of Trump’s travel ban — specifically, those in academia, said Shahab Raji, School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. candidate. Professors and graduate students who are part of the Academics United movement can add their experiences or knowledge to discussions about immigration and similar issues. More than 43,000 faculty members of various institutions signed a petition against the travel ban, calling it “detrimental to the national interests of the United States.” The petition led to the Academics United movement, Raji said. There were 144 Rutgers students impacted by the travel ban, said
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Urmi Otiv, director of the Center for Global Services. Eighty of them are from Iran, 61 are from Iraq, two are from Libya and one is from Syria. The travel ban’s impact goes beyond just the students who are from one of the seven countries, Raji said. “The students will not be able to visit their families or have their families visit them, (which) puts a lot of pressure and will affect their academic performance,” Ghassemi said. Many of the students or faculty members from the seven impacted countries are in the United States for research purposes, and have in the past been part of teams which produce advances in fields like medical research, he said. “This is going to affect everyone — it’s not just a few students from these few countries, it has a negative effect on everyone,” he said. The travel ban can also deter some professors from hiring graduate See immigrants on Page 5