THE
Daily Egyptian SERVING THE SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SINCE 1916.
DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025
VOL. 108, ISSUE 31
Lucas Burmester sits in the U.S.S. Bumfire while Auron Burmester floats next to the ship at the Cardboard Boat Regatta in campus lake April 26, 2025 in Carbondale, Illinois. The U.S.S. Bumfire took home the Titanic award. Peyton Cook | @cookmeavisual
COLUMN
A boat that’s dope – and floats: How I survived the 50th Cardboard Boat Regatta
Will Elliott @cameramanwill06
The cold air hit my face as I, alongside my co-workers, carried a month’s worth of work to the shore
of campus lake. The crowd that surrounds me in a half circle claps and cheers when we touch foot to the cool, rough sand. As soon as me and my fellow co-captain get into our
boat and touch the water, the crowd dips into silence. On the morning of Saturday, April 26, Southern Illinois University hosted its 50th annual boat
Trump, DHS reverse abrupt student visa revocations after onslaught of legal losses Jackson Brandhorst jbrandhorst@dailyegyptian.com
The Department of Justice announced Friday, April 25 in federal court that the Trump administration will reverse the visa revocations of thousands of international students across the country. First reported by POLITICO, the wholesale reversal in federal court came early Friday morning after weeks of intense scrutiny by courts and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges who deemed the mass termination of students “flagrantly illegal.” This decision comes on the heels of hundreds of court cases that resulted in losses for the federal government, many of which were fought by students in Illinois. The Department of Homeland Security is now changing their approach to monitoring the status of international students in the U.S. The DOJ said that Immigration and Customs
Enforcement is working on a “new policy” and that, until that policy is put in place, no longer will students have their SEVIS records terminated “solely based on” criminal history checks – which had flagged both misdemeanor charges and dismissed cases through their AIfueled “Catch and Revoke” method. According to both POLITICO and the Associated Press, who received statements from those involved in the federal cases, government lawyers say that ICE is “developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated plaintiffs) will remain Active or shall be reactivated if not currently active and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination.” Despite this reversal from the federal VISA REVERSAL | 2
regatta, which I had the pleasure of participating in. People of all ages came to put their cardboard creations to the test to see whose boats could survive the smelly, cold campus lake.
Races started at around 1 p.m. and featured three different categories for racers to compete in. My journey for the regatta started
REGATTA | 6
IDPH reports one confirmed measles case in southern Illinois Carly Gist cgist@dailyegyptian.com
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported the state’s first confirmed case of measles in 2025 on Wednesday, April 23. The case, which involves an adult in Marion, Illinois, is the first to be confirmed since an early 2024 outbreak in Chicago that resulted in 67 cases, according to a press release from the department. “This is the only case IDPH is aware of and this is not considered an outbreak at this time,” the department wrote in the press release. “IDPH will update the public should there be any notable developments. The risk of community transmission for the general public in Illinois remains low.” Dr. Jeff Ripperda, a family physician at Shawnee Health, emphasized this to the Daily Egyptian Thursday afternoon. “Anytime news like this comes out, it tends to trigger
people’s anxiety, and maybe people who have some health anxiety in particular also get very worried,” he said. “It’s not like we got a widespread outbreak of measles. Again, we’re talking about exactly one person thus far.” IDPH urges all Illinois residents to check that they are up-to-date on their measles/ mumps/rubella vaccinations, as people who are not vaccinated are at the highest risk of contracting the disease. “I’ve had people asking about taking more extreme precautions than they really need to take, like do they need to have levels checked in their blood to see if they’re immune to measles, should they be getting a measles booster shot, and the answer is, for pretty much anyone who got the childhood vaccination, the answer to that is no, they don’t need to do any of that, because we can generally presume immunity if you had the childhood vaccine,” Ripperda said. MEASLES | 2