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Food trucks finally arriving at NCC By BRANDON CRUZ bcruz@liherald.com
Courtesy Hofstra Student Voices for Palestine
Michael Katzen, a Jewish Hofstra student and e-board member of the university’s Student Voices for Palestine, addressing the crowd and shouting, ‘Free Palestine!” with his fist raised in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Nationwide protests hit home By BRANDON CRUZ bcruz@liherald.com
College students around the country have organized anti-war protests calling for an end to American funding for and support of Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza — which many students are describing as genocide. The protests, which began at Columbia University in Manhattan, have sparked a nationwide movement on campuses, and have now hit home, with rallies taking place at both Hofstra and Adelphi universities in the past week. Hofstra’s rally, on April 25, was organized by the university’s anthropology department chair, Timothy Daniels, with the help of student organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace and Student Voices for Palestine. “It is our responsibility,” Hofstra student
Kat Santos when asked why she and others are protesting. “As people who live in a country that is directly contributing to this genocide, it is on us to speak up and give the Palestinian people a voice, and demand an end to our country’s funding and complacency of Israel’s war crimes.” Besides calling for an end to government support of Israel, the students also demanded the full disclosure of all of the university’s financial links to companies connected to Israel’s government, and an end to all ties between the university and Israel. That includes calling for the cessation of the program Hofstra in Israel, which sends students on a month-long educational trip to Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. “We are calling on Hofstra to disclose all Continued on PaGe 10
Food trucks finally arrived on the campus of Nassau Community College at the end of week after all the dining halls, including the campus Starbucks, abruptly shut down, with almost no warning to the student body. Since their closing, students and faculty alike have demanded that the college restore the dining halls or come up with better solutions than offering food trucks, vending machines and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Following last week’s protests, the No Good Burger food truck started operating on April 24, and will continue to do so three days a week through May 22, college officials said. Another food truck, The Big Cheese, wh i ch s e r ve s h a l a l fo o d , appeared on campus for the first time early this week, and likewise plans to stick around until the end of the semester. “We thank you for your patience as the college continues to explore new food options for the campus community,” a notice on the college’s website stated. But the current situation, according to students and faculty, is still unacceptable. “It’s unconscionable,” said Faren Siminoff, president of the Nassau Community College Federation of Teachers. She added that NCC leadership knew well in advance about the planned
departure of Compass Group, the food service provider who pulled out of its contract with the college early this month, and failed to develop a contingency plan to feed the college’s students. Siminoff likened the lackluster leadership of the school to being “the Nassau University Medical Center of higher education.” Late last week, Siminoff, along with the teachers union, sent County Executive Bruce Blakeman a letter asking for an emergency allocation of county funds to be directed to NCC for “the sole purposes of restoring on-campus dining or implement(ing) a stopgap solution for the remainder of the semester.” “Initially, administrators reported that the college’s oncampus dining vendor had decided to end its contract,” Siminoff wrote. “But we learned shortly thereafter that despite administrators knowing for months the vendor was planning to leave and knew in March there would be no food services by April, they made no plans for this eventuality, leaving the college a food desert.” Siminoff stressed that time was of the essence, and added that the crisis was only the latest example of what she described as either incompetence or malfeasance by college leaders. She also detailed how administrators had “disregarded a Continued on PaGe 10