Here’s what you might have missed from Pulso Estudiantil this week:
The CEE must be overhauled according to Jenniffer González
The Resident Commissioner in Washington, Jenniffer González Colón, said on Sunday that Puerto Rico’s State Commission of Elections (CEE, in Spanish) must be completely overhauled. She expressed that the execution of the primaries was inexcusable, as the CEE could not do “the only job that they have to do.”
Results of the second round of primary elections
Here are some results of the continuation of Puerto Rico’s primary elections that took place last Sunday:
· Carlos Delgado Alteri, the current mayor of Isabela—a town in the northwest of Puerto Rico—won the primary election by obtaining 63.11% of the votes over PPD senator Eduardo Bhatia and current mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz.
· With 57.79% of the total votes obtained from the PNP, Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia won the primaries in his party. The current governor, Wanda Vázquez Garced, was defeated.
· Legislators Evelyn Vázquez and María Milagros “Tata” Charbonier lost the primaries, both ending up in last place for senator and representative by accumulation, respectively.
· Nelson del Valle and Héctor Martínez, from the New Progresist Party (PNP, in Spanish) also lost the primaries.
RUM Students Stand Out in a NASA Competition
Alpha Astrum, a student association at the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (RUM, in Spanish), built a high potency rocket that won three prizes at NASA’s Student Launch 2020 annual competition.
The rocket designed by students won three awards: on the Rookie Award, Project Review and STEM Management categories.
Student uproar after RUM updates instructions for this semester
After RUM’s General Student Council notified students on Friday, August 14th of the courses that will be imparted in hybrid or in-person formats, students denounced the lateness of the announcement. Among the complaints, pupils claimed that many of them depend on getting housing near the Campus to attend in-person classes, and didn’t look for lodging because the university did not notify them beforehand with enough time to prepare.
Hybrid courses cause uncertainty among students
Students from UPR Río Piedras’ College of Natural Sciences began taking courses from their homes, and are uncertain as to if, or when, they’ll take the laboratory component of their classes in-person. The University, its professors and students face communication barriers, and the migration of the institution’s emails from Gmail to Microsoft provoked even more chaos.
UPR professors stopped working to protest administrative chaos
The Puerto Rican Association of University Professors (APPU, in Spanish) stopped working from the 19th to the 21st of August to protest the administrative inconsistency that has been affecting the professors’ jobs. On Wednesday, they held a protest in front of the Río Piedras Campus’ Plaza Universitaria.
UPR Río Piedras welcomes 2,672 new students
2,672 new students began taking online courses from UPR Río Piedras Campus on Monday, August 17. 1,622 of these students are women, while 968 identified themselves as male. From the group, 1,068 studied in public high schools, and 1,566 come from private schools.
Alleged Hacker sends Pedro Pierluisi propaganda to UPR students
On Friday morning, “slay3r_r00t”, an alleged hacker, sent various emails to UPR students containing political propaganda that alluded to Pedro Pierluisi’s victory in the primary elections. On August 11, a user under the same handle had sent political propaganda and threatened students through UPR Cayey’s institutional email system. The University’s Office of Information Systems is investigating the matter, and its interim director expressed that the office is taking “all the required” steps to “stop this situation”.
LDAP
