RU POSITIVE Group aims to help students cope with finals through positive actions
FITBITS Oral Roberts University is being criticized for forcing students to purchase Fitbits for credit
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BASEBALL Rutgers crushes Wagner, 8-0, in Staten Island behind solid outing from freshman Serafino Brito
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WEATHER Mostly sunny High: 70 Low: 54
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THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2016
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GlobeMed helps Uganda residents with meal swipes MADHURI BHUPATHIRAJU CORRESPONDENT
Something as small as a meal swipe can help the life of a person in Uganda. The GlobeMed club at Rutgers is holding a meal swipe campaign to raise funds for their efforts in Uganda. Students can donate meal swipes and the value of that meal swipe is donated by Rutgers to the organization. Students can donate one or two meal swipes at tables set up at dining halls or though an online link. Each meal swipe contributes $3 to the fundraiser. GlobeMed is a student-run, non-profit organization started in 2011 at Rutgers that focuses on
issues such as global health and public health, said Kevin Xie, a School of Arts and Sciences senior and co-president of the club. Recently the club has been working with Change A Life Uganda, a non-profit organization. Every summer, the club also sends a few students to the country they are raising funds for, Xie said. “We devised a project with the non-profit throughout the year and we pitch our ideas and we get their feedback and they pitch their ideas of what they want us to do over there. We put together a cohesive project,” he said. The meal swipe campaign is a program organized by RUSA, he SEE SWIPES ON PAGE 4
New Jersey had 3.3 million people vote in the 2012 presidential elections, with nearly 2 million votes for Democrats and 1.3 million for Republicans. At the time, there were a little over 1 million registered Democrats and 1.7 million registered Republicans.. GRAPHIC BY RIDDHI PATEL
U. organizations discard opposing views, host voter registration drive JESSICA HERRING STAFF WRITER
On April 20 the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group joined together for the first time with the two governing councils, five political student groups and the Residence Hall Association to encourage students to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Groups were set up in the student centers on every campus
to promote political activism in a non-partisan manner. Nainika Paul, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student, along with other NJPIRG members, explained to Rutgers University students how to vote and the importance of speaking up. “We have so many groups on campus who choose to table at different times and for different candidates, but we wanted to show the students and administration on Rutgers, that
when needed, our groups can come together in a non-partisan and united way to give Rutgers students the chance to register to vote for the simple goal of getting their voices heard,” Paul said. This event marks the first time liberals, conservatives, governing councils and a non-profit organization have joined together for a Rutgers Vote Day, she said. NJPIRG SEE DRIVE ON PAGE 5
Hindi students participate in Yale debate, reach 2nd-place ranking SUSMITA PARUCHURI Mary D’Anella Mercanti is a member of Rutgers One, a group that is working to help increase instructor pay and lower tuition costs for students. COURTESY OF MARY D’ANELLA MERCANTI
Rutgers One fights for fair pay, tuition rollback JONATHAN XIONG CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A coalition of students groups and labor unions are working to defend public education. Rutgers One, an organization whose major members include the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of
Teachers, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), Black Lives Matter and the Union of Rutgers Administration, are actively trying to ensure all instructors are paid fairly without burdening students unduly. The Rutgers One coalition can trace its roots back to a wage SEE ROLLBACK ON PAGE 4
DESIGN EDITOR
Last weekend, two Rutgers Hindi students joined the ranks of Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, at the annual Yale Hindi Debate, taking home the second place prize in the Non-Native Heritage category. Shivaniben Patel and Heta Patel boarded a train from Edison to New Haven on Friday for the event. “The minute we walked in, Seema (Khurana), the coordinator of the whole event, greeted us ... she was so polite and nice,” said Shivaniben Patel, a School of Arts and Sciences junior. This was Rutgers’ second time at the debate after Shaheen Parveen,
a professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers first submitted a request for the school to participate in 2014, a year after she first began working at the school. Other students from the various northeastern colleges filed in slowly, including Bhoomika Joshi and Shikhar Singh, Ph.D. students at Yale University who served as judges alongside Parveen, Shivaniben Patel said. The students were split into four different groups based on their fluency in Hindi and whether they were of the heritage or not, she said. The turnout was very diverse, she said. “I was amazed to see American people speak Hindi so well,” she said. “I was feeling bad about
myself … like, am I speaking worse than them?” As Indian-born Gujarati speakers, both Shivaniben and Heta Patel placed into the Non-Native Heritage group. Both had learned Hindi in the past, but felt they were no longer as proficient in the language. “After nine years of not speaking Hindi, I felt like I was losing a part of my culture,” said Heta Patel, a School of Arts and Sciences junior. “I knew that just because I moved to America, it does not mean that I am done with my culture and I should forget it.” Shivaniben Patel, who moved to the United States in 10th grade, said she wanted to participate in the debate to improve her Hindi and work on her public speaking anxiety. SEE RANKING ON PAGE 5
VOLUME 148, ISSUE 52 • UNIVERSITY ... 3 • OPINIONS ... 6 • CLASSIFIEDS ... 7 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT... 8 • DIVERSIONS ... 9 • SPORTS ... BACK