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TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28, 2012
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Today: Partly Sunny
CONFERENCE CAPPER
High: 50• Low: 34
The Rutgers women’s basketball team closed the regular season last night against Marquette, earning a win and the No. 6 seed in the Big East Tournament.
USAS panel shares experiences with sweatshops in NJ, globally BY RICHARD CONTE CORRESPONDENT
Students were offered the opportunity to learn that sweatshops are on the rise because of globalization through “Sweatshops in the Global Economy” last night at Trayes Hall in the Douglass Campus Center. Rutgers United Students Against Sweatshops organized the event, with the goal of educating students on upholding workers’ welfare, said Anna Barcy, a member of RUSAS. “We’re hoping that by the end of the night [students] have a better understanding of the issue,” said Barcy, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student. The event featured a panel discussion, with RUSAS President Richard Garzon, Geisa Rocha, a part-time lecturer in Latin American studies, and Carmen Martino, a professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations. Martino, the co-founder of New Labor, an organization that tries to improve working conditions in Latin
America, said many temporar y agencies took advantage of their workers. “It’s a situation where people are paid less than minimum wage, where people are not paid over time, but they work more than 40 hours, a place where people get hur t, and no one wants to take responsibility for the person who has been injured,” Mar tino said. “It’s a ver y hazardous industr y.” Martino said workers, who usually do not have driver’s licenses, get rides to work from the agency that employs them, he said. “They make you pay for the ride,” Martino said. Mauricio Castillo and Carmen Hernandez, two workers and members of New Labor, shared stories of working in poor labor circumstances during the discussion, with Br yan Nelson, an organizer for New Labor, translating their accounts.
SEE USAS ON PAGE 5
ENRICO CABREDO / ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Dharun Ravi and his lawyer Steven Altman walk into the Middlesex County Courtroom before yesterday’s trial.
Wei gives account of webcam viewings during Ravi’s trial BY STEVEN MILLER CORRESPONDENT
NELSON MORALES / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of Rutgers United Students Against Sweatshops and New Labor, an organization that tries to improve working conditions in Latin America, discuss labor conditions yesterday at Trayes Hall in the Douglass Campus Center.
INDEX
SCARFING SAMOSAS
METRO South Plainfield residents donate goods to families affected by a deadly fire.
OPINIONS The state’s third annual Bike/Ped Summit outlined a number of measures that would ensure safety of cyclists, pedestrians.
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ENRICO CABREDO / ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Scott Park, a School of Engineering junior, chows down on samosas with his team The Samosas Slammers. The Desi International Youth Association sponsored the samosa-eating contest last night at the Busch Campus Center Multipurpose Room.
The closest thing to emotion any member of the Ravi family showed yesterday came in the worried glances, exchanged shor tly after the lunch hour yesterday at Middlesex County Courthouse. Dharun Ravi sat composed at the defense table in his black suit with a blue shir t and pink tie, charged with invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness tampering and hindering arrest in connection to the September 2010 death of Tyler Clementi. But his parents exchanged looks of surprise when the prosecutors called Molly Wei, a former University student considered Ravi’s accomplice, to the witness stand. No one anticipated the key witness for the prosecution to testify on Day 2 of the trial, which is expected to last three to four weeks. But after early morning testimony from School of Arts and Sciences sophomore Pooja Kolluri, Associate Director for Residence Life William O’Brien and the cross-examination of School of Engineering sophomore Scott Xu, Wei took the stand. The prosecutors took the opportunity to explain how the video of Clementi with an older man appeared on her computer and how Ravi reacted afterward. “He thought we were going to get in trouble, so he wanted to make it seem like it was more of an accident,” said Wei, who transferred from the University. “We knew that there would be a video.” The defense used the cross-examination to prove Ravi had no homophobic motivation. “I didn’t get the sense that he didn’t like Tyler,” Wei said, “just that they were different.” That point will prove vital in the case, as Ravi could face a 10year prison sentence should the 15-member jury find him guilty of the top bias intimidation charge for acting with malice against Clementi because of his sexual orientation. Wei, who the Rutgers University Police Department initially arrested along with Ravi, signed a waiver of indictment for two counts invasion of privacy — fourth degree for viewing without consent and third degree for broadcasting without consent. She is part of a pre-trial intervention program that will dismiss the charges upon completion of 300 hours of community service, payment of a fee, counseling about cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles, and truthful testimony in court. That testimony began with a detailed account of her relationship with Ravi. The pair first met in middle school, but fell out of touch when they attended West Windsor-Plainsboro North High School, which Kolluri and Xu also attended.
SEE TRIAL ON PAGE 5