14 OctOber 24 - 30, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ton infliction of pain.” On the other hand, it was recognized that prisons have a duty to treat a prisoner’s serious medical condi- tions, and the Court warmed up to the idea that prison conditions can be deemed pun- ishment in their own right. Prior to this, the Eighth Amendment was mostly consid- ered a procedural protection. Columbia Law School professor Philip M. Genty said of Estelle, “Despite [its] noble goals (…), the decision is fundamentally flawed and has had a detrimental impact upon the very prisoners it was intended to protect.” Plyler v. Doe (1982) Undocumented immigrant children have a right to public school education. Sort of. Public education is not a constitutional right at this point, but if the federal govern- ment decides to offer a public education program, undocumented children must be conferred this right in equal measure to doc- umented ones. At least, that’s what the Su- preme Court said here. In 1975, the Texas State Legislature passed a law barring undocumented children from being admitted into public schools without paying tuition. This was challenged through a class-action lawsuit against the Tyler Inde- pendent School District, and the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas filed an amicus petition in support of the children. The children and the Diocese ultimately got their wish, as the Court said that this leg- islation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ap- plies to everyone physically within a state’s borders, regardless of immigration status. United States v. Rahimi (2024) Arlington was at the center of a Second Amendment challenge earlier this year. And gun control activists breathed a sigh of relief when all the justices, except for the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, up- held the regulation in question. The peti- tioner contended that prohibiting domestic abusers subject to restraining orders from owning firearms was a violation of their Second Amendment rights. In December 2019, Zackey Rahimi as- saulted his then-girlfriend, C.M., after an ar- gument in an Arlington parking lot. As she successfully escaped, Rahimi grabbed his gun and fired shots – the record does not seem to clarify where the gun was pointed. He reportedly called his girlfriend thereaf- ter and threatened to shoot her if she re- ported it to law enforcement. After the incident, Rahimi was named in a domestic violence restraining order is- sued by a Tarrant County judge in February 2020. The court found that family violence occurred and Rahimi was likely to reoff- end. In violation of this restraining order, Rahimi continued contacting C.M. He also used his firearm once again on a different woman in November of that year, and be- cause federal law prohibits subjects of a do- mestic violence restraining order from possessing firearms, he was prosecuted by federal authorities. Rahimi is currently serving his sentence at the Green Bay Jail in Fort Worth. ▼ HIGHER EDUCATION ‘IS IT ALWAYS THIS SCARY?’ AT UT DALLAS, POLITICS IS LOCAL ... MOSTLY. BY GREGORIO OLIVARES GUTIERREZ D isillusionment, disenfranchisement and despondence are all words one could easily use to describe the cur- rent mood at UT Dallas. With the November election quickly ap- proaching, students are not particularly en- thusiastic about their choices for the Oval Office; many student activists are more fo- cused on local and state elections because of the immediate and tangible impact they have on the university and North Texas community as a whole. Two main political trends stand out at UTD: the first is student concerns regarding the ongoing war in Palestine and university investments in weapons manufacturers fa- cilitating this conflict; the second is student involvement in local and state politics as a result of the issues they encounter on a daly basis. The Background U TD may have once been a relatively quiet campus, but the past two years have been astoundingly hectic for its students. In spring 2023, the UTD divestment campaign successfully passed a resolution in the UTD Student Government that called for University of Texas/Texas A&M Invest- ment Management Co. (UTIMCO) and thus the university to divest itself from five weapon manufacturers. UTD President Richard Benson publicly distanced himself from the students in a letter he sent to the Texas Jewish Post. That spring, Texas legislators also ap- proved Senate Bill 17, which prohibited state-funded universities from maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and banned the programs, activities and trainings those offices had offered. Fall 2023 saw more frequent protests or- ganized by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and a back-and-forth spray paint struggle over the political mes- saging displayed on the campus Spirit Rocks, a public forum for student expres- sion that had been used to display political messages as early as 2009. The Spirit Rocks were abruptly removed in November 2023 as students went home for fall break, a move that sparked weeks of protest. That fall marked the end of the UTD Office of Diver- sity Equity and Inclusion. The short-lived Office of Campus Resources and Support re- placed it for most of the spring semester be- fore it, too, was dissolved. On May 1, 2024, UTD’s first-ever stu- dent encampment and first-ever state trooper raid took place. The arrest of 21 students, faculty, alumni and community members has continued to have a profound effect on campus as the university pursued both legal and academic charges against those arrested. Fall 2024 has included the end of The Mercury, UT Dallas’ student newspaper, which has operated since 1980, and new prohibitions on student expression as seen with the banning of chalking on campus. Why So Many Protests? S tudents don’t like war. Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, college campuses in the U.S. were scenes of large anti-war protests in response to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In the ‘80s it was major student-led anti-apart- heid protests in response to government policies in South Africa. The current wave of protests at UTD aims to persuade the university to divest itself of investments in weapons manufacturers such as Ray- theon, Lockheed Martin and General Dy- namics. On April 26, 2024, UTD Students for Justice in Palestine published its state- ment to Benson in which it said “the de- mands we have are unequivocal, and we lay them out clearly again: divest from death and destruction, protect Palestinian voices and advocacy, and condemn the genocidal assault on the Palestinian peo- ple by calling for an immediate and per- manent ceasefire.” Hundreds of students have walked out of classes and joined peaceful protests, sit-ins and encampments on campus. And it is these demonstrations that campus adminis- trators have elected to meet with state force. Political science junior Eric Sell said, “I think it is unacceptable that [Kamala] Har- ris is unable to even insinuate that Israel should be held accountable in any way for the amount of disproportionate civilian deaths they have caused.” Sell, a 43-year-old medically retired Army veteran with 10 years of service, said that while he more closely aligns with the Democratic Party on the issues such as abortion, gun legislation and voting rights, his stance against the unconditional military aid sent to Israel is of such importance to him that he would vote third party were it not for the threat he believes Donald Trump and efforts such as Project 2025 pose to American democracy. Disillusionment and interest in third par- ties because of Israel’s actions are not unique to Sell. On Oct. 5 the UTD Muslim Student Association hosted a presidential candidate forum. Invitations were sent to the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian campaigns, but only the Green Party agreed to attend. Rafah Shaik, a UTD MSA officer, said there were roughly 800 RSVPs for the discussion with presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Butch Ware. More than 500 attendees packed the Stu- dent Services Building Addition auditorium that night. Stein and Ware received two standing ovations from students and community members as they discussed key parts of their party platform, with particular emphasis on their desire for an end to what they de- scribed as “apartheid” and “genocide” in Palestine. (Editor’s note: Their words, not ours. Human rights groups, agencies of the U.N. and former President Jimmy Carter have applied the label apartheid to Israel, drawing criticism and counter arguments. South Africa accused Israel before the Court of International Justice of committing geno- cide in Gaza. The court ordered Israel to take steps to avoid committing genocide, but “took a very cautious approach to this case and was careful not to suggest that Israel is commit- ting genocide,” according to a explanation published the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. As with most aspects of the history Israel and Palestine, viewpoints vary greatly.) “At UTD a lot of us are less hopeful about these upcoming elections, and we wanted to shed a light on what voting can mean when you make a space for your voice to be heard,” Shaik said. Local Politics W ith over 300 student organiza- tions, there is always some sort of event going on at UTD, and many involve either local politicians or local activism. The Legislative Affairs Committee of the UTD Student Government has in the past worked to host voter registration drives, brought politicians to campus and has advo- cated for the university to publicize the lo- cation of the two on-campus polling locations. Philip Yabut/Getty Images Many landmark supreme court cases had roots in North Texas. Unfair Park from p10
