Issuu

“PART OF OUR TEAM”: Though illness kept him off the field, Josh Rubenstein stays close to Terps lacrosse, p. 12

DON’T GO TO COACHELLA: The festival is problematic because of its contributions to anti-LGBT groups, p. 9

ONLINE AT

ISSUE NO.

dbknews.com

OUR

109th

29 YEAR

Monday, April 22, 2019

SGA

MaryPIRG leaked phone numbers to SGA parties

campus

After investigation, the body doesn’t plan to take action The University of Maryland’s MaryPIRG said Saturday it leaked more than 400 students’ phone numbers to two parties running in the SGA elections — but the body doesn’t intend to take any action as a result. MaryPIRG, a nonprofit student lobbying group that bills itself as nonpartisan, sent Empower Maryland and Unite UMD a spreadsheet of information it collected through its Survey Corps campaign. The initiative aims to compile students’ concerns and ideas about ways to improve the campus, said Tino Fragale, the group’s president. In addition to a litany of students’ names and concerns, the sheet listed 450 phone numbers — something Fragale said he didn’t realize before he sent it. “It was always a dream of mine for the SGA to craft their platform to understand what students wanted, based on their comments,” said Fragale, a senior independent studies major. “I did not intend for any campaign to have the phone data.” The Empower Maryland ticket — which won the presidency by a wide margin and secured all but three legislative seats in the Student Government Association elections Wednesday — texted 70 of the 450 numbers Monday and Tuesday asking for votes before the leak was realized. Ireland Lesley, the body’s president-elect who ran on the Empower ticket, was not available Sunday afternoon for comment. Fragale said he told Empower Maryland to stop using the numbers when he realized what was happening. Sabah Rana, a sophomore who ran unsuccessfully as an architecture school representative on the Unite ticket, received two text messages from an Empower Maryland ticket member. Rana reported the breach to the SGA’s election commission Tuesday night. “I feel like it’s really deceitful to be taking numbers from an organization that’s told everyone they’re gonna be nonpartisan,” the architecture and art history major said. “It’s such a violation of privacy.” But Nancy Jin, chairwoman of the SGA’s threeperson elections commission, said the commission chose not to take any action after investigating the claim. “There wasn’t a specific election rule that was violated, so it’s not really under our purview,” said Jin, a senior government and politics major. “These election rules are kind of vague, so maybe the people who are editing and revising the rules for next year may want to take it into consideration.” MaryPIRG, which did not endorse a party in the elections, is funded through the Student Activiby

Arya Hodjat @arya_kidding_me Staff writer

Adith Thummalapalli compiled a report to track inaccesibility for disabled students across the campus. It was recently endorsed by the SGA. julia nikhinson/the diamondback

Access Denied

write down observations in an attempt to document inaccessible buildings and other obstacles across the campus. Slowly, his notes grew to a 43-page report. And on April 3, the Student Government Association passed a resolution to publish Thummalapalli’s report and use it as an effort to urge the administration to make the campus more accessible for students with disabilities. “We want to see these issues fixed,” said SGA By Victoria Ebner | @victoria_ebner | Senior staff writer Speaker of the Legislature Noah Eckman. “There’s no reason that so many things on campus should be One night last September, Adith going so long being inaccessible for some people.” The resolution passed 31-0 with one abstention. The report includes pictures, notes and testimoThummalapalli showed up to the nies from students with disabilities and regulations University of Maryland’s Kent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, proposing solutions for everything from missing curb cuts Hall, excitedly toting a birthday to inaccessible bathrooms in the South Campus Dining Hall. card and a king-sized Kit-Kat bar. Many of the problems Thummalapalli identified are already being tracked in the university’s 2016 He had helped to plan this day for two weeks — a sur- ADA Transition Plan, but he said the school hasn’t prise 20th birthday party for one of his best friends. made it a priority to resolve them. He hopes his Before he left, Thummalapalli, who has a physical report — and the SGA’s endorsement — will help disability and uses a wheelchair, checked online and spark change. “It just makes it easier for university officials and made sure that the dorm had a wheelchair symbol next to it — which indicates there are accessible staff and faculty to see the report, because SGA is such a large organization and they have more comrooms in the building. However, when he got to the dorm, he found that munication channels,” he said. “We can do our part he’d need to use the stairs to access the part of the and try to spread the word, but it’s just easier and building where his friend’s room was. Unable to do more impactful for a large organization to spread so, he waited outside until his friend came to see the word.” In a statement, a Facilities Management spokeshim. They talked for about five minutes, he gave her person wrote that the department “want[s] to hear the gift, and he went home alone. from members of the community who are experiThe party went on. “It was literally six stairs,” the junior mechanical encing accessibility issues on campus.” “If a student-created report is submitted to our engineering major said, “that prevented me from … office, we will review it to better understand current spending that night with my friends.” Four days later, still fueled by his anger and frus- accessibility needs and concerns,” the statement tration, Thummalapalli began to take pictures and read. See adith, p. 8

See leak , p. 8

student government

Lesley to be next SGA president The Empower Maryland candidate received more than 2,000 votes The University of Maryland SGA announced Wednesday that Ireland Lesley will be its next president after one of the most highly contested elections in recent history. Lesley ran on the Empower Maryland ticket, centering her platform on transparency and student involvement in the Student Government Association. As part of her campaign, the junior government and politics major said she reached out to over 100 campus by

Morgan Politzer @thedbk Staff writer

clubs and organizations to see what kind of change they wanted to see on campus. “I’m elated,” Lesley said. “I’m glad that students really resonated with our mission and our goals.” Of the 4,051 votes cast for president, Lesley received 2,179, or 53.8 percent. YOU Ticket nominee Andrew String was second with 20.3 percent, Unite UMD nominee Taylor Green was third with 15.5 percent and Chicken Broth for Your Soul candidate Barath Srinivasan was fourth with 10.3 percent. “I just tried doing something, and I tried to get people to vote, and

it was a good experience to have,” said Srinivasan, a sophomore computer science major. “I sent Ireland an email…saying it was a good campaign and it was fun.” In addition to focusing on i n c rea s i n g c o m m u n i c a t i o n between the students, administration and the SGA, Lesley hopes to improve sexual assault prevention programs on campus and educate students prior to entering the university. Lesley’s victory follows a chaotic election cycle for the student governing body. The election was postponed five days — from April 10-12 to April 15-17 — to “allow for current standing appeals and complaints to be thoroughly and fairly processed.”