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As we noted last week, the US Supreme Court recently upheld Indiana’s strict voter ID law, raising concerns about the disfranchisement of out-of-state college students. Reports from yesterday’s primary voting suggest that those concerns were at least partially warranted.
College students often vote in their college communities but maintain driver’s licenses from their states of origin. Under Indiana law, out-of-state licenses are not valid ID for voting.
Public university students with out-of-state licenses were able to vote without incident yesterday, as their college ID cards are regarded as “state-issued” identification for the purposes of the law. Student PIRG poll-watchers did, however, report a number of incidents in which private-college students were turned away. One PIRG representative further noted that news of the stringent ID requirements likely kept some students away from the polls altogether.
Twenty international students at the University of Sussex in England have been banned from taking final exams because they have fallen behind in their tuition payments.
More than 150 Sussex students staged a protest against the decision late last week. The president of the university’s student union described the proposed payment schedules and the timing of the university’s action as unreasonable.
The protest follows a successful Facebook campaign on behalf of one of the students, Luqman Onikosi of Nigeria. When Onikosi’s sponsor in England died, he was unable to raise the money to pay the fees himself.
The university recently agreed to allow Onikosi to take his exams and put off payment until September.
Update: A follow-up protest is planned for this Friday, May 9.
A major police operation on the San Diego State University campus led to the arrest of 75 students on drug charges yesterday. Fifty pounds of marijuana and four pounds of cocaine were seized in the sting, which involved seven SDSU fraternities.
The arrests were the culmination of six months of undercover work in SDSU’s frats, initiated after a 19-year-old student died of a cocaine and alcohol overdose last year. All of those arrested were men, and approximately twenty were charged with drug sales rather than possession.
On Tuesday SDSU suspended six fraternities — Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Theta, Theta Chi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Alpha Mu — that were implicated in the case. All of the arrested students have been suspended, and those who lived in campus housing are being evicted.
