Rutgers University has a history of stupid policies when it comes to illegal aliens. In November of 2016, FAIR noted that the Rutgers student newspaper, The Daily Targum fired one of its reporters for using the completely accurate term “illegal alien.”
In addition, the university appears to have at least 500 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients studying at its three campuses in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden, New Jersey. That number is likely so high because students and faculty members have attempted to make Rutgers a “sanctuary campus” (whatever that absurd term means), and the university’s president promised that the school “will protect the privacy of undocumented immigrants attending the university.”
Now, Rutgers has begun training students how to empathize with illegal aliens, using a program called “DREAM Zone,” which originated at New York University. And at least one university administrator has suggested the program should be mandatory for all students.
Of course, none of this should be surprising. Rutgers is the same university that in 2017 forced incoming freshmen pay for a $175 “orientation package” covering inane topics like “micro aggression” and “safe spaces.” It’s also the university whose students and faculty called former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice a “war criminal” and suggested that she be disinvited as the 2014 commencement speaker. (Secretary Rice, wisely, decided to pass and do something productive with her time.)
Rutgers, like many American institutions of higher education, seems to have shifted its focus from teaching young men and women how to think critically, to indoctrinating radical leftist agitators. In the case of a private university, that would be tragic, but, nevertheless, acceptable. Private universities answer to their boards of trustees and to parents who pay tuition.
However, public universities are an arm of the state. That means that Rutgers is using taxpayer dollars encouraging students to violate our immigration laws and training them to interfere with attempts to enforce those laws. And that should concern New Jersey taxpayers, each of whom has an interest in Rutgers, even if they never attended a single class there.
As Aviv Khavic, the student reporter fired from The Daily Targum for using the term “illegal alien” notes, “I think it’s a really worrying trend that colleges are sort of enforcing this lack of respect for the rule of law.” Ironically, Mr. Khavic is a legal immigrant from Israel. Clearly, he got his grounding in American civics somewhere other than a classroom at Rutgers.
Aside from expecting state universities to refrain from using public funds to encourage lawlessness, taxpayers should also be concerned about what American students are missing out on. Every dollar spent on programs aimed at aiding students who have no right to be in the United States is a dollar taken away from students who are citizens or lawful immigrants.
It’s time for the citizens of New Jersey to start demanding that university administrators use taxpayers’ money wisely.