Wednesday Morning Scoop: DACA Decision

Welcome to the Morning Scoop for April 25, 2018. There’s big news for Dreamers this morning, while the news for many student newspapers across the country is not nearly as good. And a California student may have figured out this whole election mess: let’s just elect squirrels.

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Judge Rules DACA Program Must Continue

There is renewed hope for Dreamers after another pro-DACA decision. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Another judge has shut down President Trump’s efforts to end the DACA immigration program, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security had failed to provide an adequate explanation for why the program is unlawful. Judges in California and New York had previously handed down similar rulings.

Judge John D. Bates gave the Homeland Security Department 90 days to “better explain its view,” meaning the administration won’t be immediately required to start taking new applications for the program. He also called the Trump administration’s rationale for shutting down the Obama-era DACA program “arbitrary and capricious.”

“Each day that the agency delays is a day that aliens who might otherwise be eligible for initial grants of DACA benefits are exposed to removal because of an unlawful agency action,” Bates wrote.

Save Student Newsrooms Day

Melissa Gomez, Editor-in-Chief of Florida State University’s The Independent Florida Alligator, has proclaimed today Save Student Newsrooms Day in an effort to call attention to the increasing number of student newspapers that have been forced to shut down or face dire funding situations.

The announcement that the student-run media company at Southern Methodist University would be closing after 90 years was a catalyst for the effort. The University of Connecticut’s The Daily Campus reports that student newspapers — The Central Florida Future and Boston University’s The Daily Press among them — are in dire situations as well.

“The whole idea behind the call to action day was to start a conversation about the state of student media in the US,” Gomez told CNN. “Some people who may be removed from the university and or their publication may not realize that student newsrooms don’t look like they did 20 years ago. Some of them have folded. Some of them are struggling to survive the next month. Others don’t really have a secured future. And we want people to be aware of that.”

Did a Squirrel Really Get Elected to the UC Berkeley Student Senate?

UC Berkeley sophomore Stephen Boyle thought it would be a good idea to run for Student Senate this semester, but he didn’t approach it in a conventional manner. He got a squirrel suit, created a character named Furry Boi and campaigned on a platform that promised safe spaces for squirrels and better access to acorns, to name a few of his planks.

Amazingly, he beat out all the human candidates and got the seat. Predictably, not everyone on campus was amused. Get the rest of the story from CMN’s report. 

Today in a Tweet 

You know where our minds are today. Here are some thoughtful essays on why it’s important to #SaveStudentNewsrooms…

Last But Not Least: When Mexican Food is Everything

A Texas man who stole $1.2 million worth of fajitas and re-sold them for profit has been sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Juvenile Justice employee Gilberto Escamilla was found to have purchased $1,251,578 worth of fajitas over a nine-year period. That’s a lot of sizzling meat. CMN’s Senior Editor Carla Loebenstein has all the details in her report.  

The mid-week Morning Scoop was compiled from contributions from Natalia Kolenko, Carla Loebenstein and the CMN Staff. We’re all about keeping student newsrooms strong today.