Rowan University student groups on Thursday protested a recent professional development event in which the business school hosted a team from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection office.
More than 3,000 letters have been sent to university leadership as part of a campaign by Rowan Students for Justice in Palestine and Rowan Young Democratic Socialists of America. The letters call the DHS presence on campus “unacceptable” and add that “so many of our community members live every day in immense fear, trying at every cost to avoid interaction with agents of this violent regime.”
Rowan spokesperson Joe Cardona told NJ Spotlight News that more than 200 employers participated in the event in addition to the DHS.
“The presence of any employer on campus does not constitute institutional endorsement of that organization’s policies or actions,” Cardona said.
Meanwhile, student groups organized marches and protests at Princeton and Rutgers recently, decrying ICE activity in the state, with some arrests occurring near their schools.
A petition launched by the Rutgers Young Democratic Socialists of America in October, which has collected nearly 3,000 signatures, urges the university to “refuse to work with ICE officers, National Guard, or other militarized Federal forces that may be utilized illegally and unjustly by the administration to target marginalized community members,” among other demands.
A Rutgers spokesperson declined to comment.
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