University of Maryland undergraduates will vote in upcoming student elections on referendums to oust a system regent who had contact with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and to declare College Park a sanctuary campus for illegal immigrants evading Trump administration deportations.
Both measures in the Student Government Association vote, on March 30 and April 1, build on unanimous resolutions from the student legislature that administrators ignored.
The referendums offer a “firmer demonstration” of what undergraduates at the state’s flagship public campus want, said Louis Mancuso, the student government’s chief of staff and a sophomore accounting major.
“When every student votes on a ballot referendum and it passes, that adds a little more weight than if 20 student legislators vote on it,” Mr. Mancuso said in a phone call on Wednesday.
Nevertheless, Mr. Mancuso acknowledged that voting turnout is typically “not great” and that the outcome “really has no authority.”
The student-run Diamondback newspaper estimates that 6,000 undergraduates voted in last spring’s elections. That was the highest turnout since 2020, but still only 20% of the school’s roughly 30,000 students.
University of Maryland officials declined to comment. They repeatedly insisted last year that administrators have no obligation to adopt student recommendations.
The Student Government Association called for the resignation of Tom McMillen, a former Democratic congressman from Maryland, as regent after his name appeared in files the Justice Department publicized last month.
Mr. McMillen is a former Terrapins basketball star who chaired the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports during the Clinton administration. Emails, flight logs and other documents in the Epstein files show that he maintained contact with Epstein from that time until five years after the financier pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor.
On March 4, the Student Government Association approved a resolution calling on him to resign.
The student government voted March 11 to add the following to the upcoming ballot: “Do you call upon the University System of Maryland Board of Regents and the leadership of the University of Maryland to demand the resignation of USM Regent Tom McMillen in light of documented communications with Jeffrey Epstein?”
In an email to The Washington Times on Wednesday, Mr. McMillen said he was “working on a global response” that was “not ready now.”
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun last month, he dismissed a 2013 text message as a “blow-off” to Epstein. Mr. McMillen previously claimed they hadn’t spoken since the 1990s.
Meanwhile, student-led efforts to declare College Park a sanctuary campus date back to January 2017. At that time, university President Wallace Loh rejected a list of demands to “resist” the first Trump administration.
Current President Darryll J. Pines has remained publicly silent on the topic.
In December, the Student Government Association voted unanimously to demand that Mr. Pines disavow any collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The bill noted that ICE agents “carried out arrests” in the Maryland suburbs bordering Washington, sparking “heightened fear and uncertainty among immigrant residents.”
More than 1 in 4 residents of Prince George’s County, where the university is located, are foreign-born.
The county is a Democrat-led sanctuary jurisdiction that recently banned ICE detention centers. County officials estimated in a 2023 report that its population and economy would shrink significantly without immigration.
The referendum on the upcoming student government ballot calls on Mr. Pines to adopt policies “refusing ICE entry to private buildings without a judicial warrant, alerting UMD community members when ICE agents are on campus, and refusing ICE access to information of students without a lawful court order.”
In a bill approving the referendum, the student government accused the university of lacking a clear public policy compared with neighboring Maryland jurisdictions. It also noted that more than 3,000 students signed a petition calling for sanctuary campus status after seven students had their visas revoked.
The Washington Times reached out to ICE and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy for comment.
The term “sanctuary campus” carries no legal meaning.
The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a D.C. coalition of university officials supporting inclusive immigration policies, has insisted the University of Maryland and other schools still quietly help migrant students fight deportation, despite dismantling publicly accessible services the past year.
That makes the sanctuary campus status of schools such as Portland State University, the University of Pennsylvania and Pitzer College in California unnecessary, the alliance says.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.