NOVEMBER 19, 2025 • VOLUME 96 • ISSUE 12
The official student newspaper of Quinnipiac University since 1929
Physician Assistant program taken off probation after two years By NATHAN ROJAS Staff Writer
Updated parking policy at Hilltop Lot frustrates students TYLER MIGNAULT/CHRONICLE
By MADELYN DURKEE Staff Writer
Quinnipiac University students are experiencing confusion and inconvenience as a new policy was implemented for parking at Hilltop lot, preventing them from entering campus at the service entrance. A document outlining the new short-term parking policy states that “the intent is to provide convenient, temporary access to the main cam-
pus area while maintaining overall parking availability and campus safety.” The implementation of the new policy has prevented sophomore students, with a U2 parking pass for students with 27-56 credits, from entering campus at all. “(The Public Safety officer) saw my sticker up in the front, and he was like ‘you can’t come in here at all,’ and I was confused. Why can’t I
come in?” Layla Cox, a sophomore in the film, television and media 3+1 program, said. She was told not to enter campus at the service entrance next to the College of Arts and Sciences because sophomores are not permitted to park in Hilltop Lot. First-year and sophomore students are not See PARKING Page 2
Student organizations collaborate in ‘Voices for Palestine’ event By LILLIAN CURTIN Opinion Editor
Quinnipiac University’s Students for Social Justice and Multicultural Student Leadership Council held a collaborative panel event on Nov. 13 called “Voices for Palestine,” featuring panelist speakers that focused on “education, dialogue, and collective reflection on Palestinian identity, resistance and the power of community in shaping liberation.” The panel featured speakers Basel Alnajjar, Layan Alnajjar and Sam Pudlin. Siblings Basel and Layan Alnajjar, Palestinian-Syrian activists, are cofounders of the non-profit organization We Will Return, “Fighting for the liberation of our homeland through activism, humanitarian aid, and education.” They grew up in Hartford, but their mother was born in Palestine. Pudlin is the founder of the Hartford Jewish Organizing Collective (HJOC) and a charter member of the Connecticut Palestine Solidarity Coalition. The event was moderated by SSJ Co-Presidents Xiomara Saavedra-Vicente and Mariam Saad and SSJ’s Vice-President and MSLC President Tahira Jilu. The organizations began collaborating in spring 2025 to plan the event. The event opened with discussion of how identity has shaped the panelists’ activism. Basel reflected on his Muslim ethnicity and religion “These three identities paired into effect, really just motivated me and inspired me to be-
come an artist,” Basel said. “You see your family going through occupation, going through ethnic cleansing, going through restriction of movement that’s going on over there.” Layan explained it from a different perspective: academically and professionally. She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a major in marketing and a minor in management, with a concentration in digital marketing analytics. Layan explained that it’s helpful to use your biggest strengths to contribute to the movement. “For me, I’m good at marketing, I’m good at social media, I’m good at engagement metrics, I’m good at making flyers,” Layan said. “So I inserted myself in the movement in that way.” Pudlin agreed that identity plays a large role in activism. “(HJOC) is designed to organize on an affinity basis,” Pudlin said. “(Affinity organization) allows you to create these small communities that can be so much more durable than other types of political organization, that can really get people together, bonded.” The panelists also described the barriers they’ve faced when it comes to advocacy. Basel spoke from the perspective of a former college student, reflecting on his time at UConn. “Every single thing that we tried to do was shut down by (administration),” Basel said. Layan highlighted a protest held at UConn by the Students for Justice in Palestine in
2021, where the organization, Hillel, passed out “Islamophobic pamphlets” at the protest, which conflated Islam and the pro-Palestine movement with terrorism. In 2024 Quinnipiac’s Students for Justice in Palestine was the original name of Students for Social Justice. However, the University’s Office of Student Engagement denied the organization until the name was changed, according to a statement made by SSJ at the time. Layan continued that one of the biggest barriers is the silence from your universities and employers. She said to “expose” them by taking to social media and documenting what is going on. Pudlin noted that he’s known people who have lost their jobs and been harassed for their involvement in activism. “It can get bad, but at the end of the day, that’s just blackmail,” Pudlin said, adding that you can’t be blackmailed if everything you stand for is already made public. When asked about anti-semitism, he said that, “This conflation of opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism puts us in real, physical danger.” He noted a specific example. “We are moving rapidly from a point where they say all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic to only criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic,” Pudlin said. “When Elon Musk threw a hand for a salute, they were the first ones out there saying, See EVENT Page 3
Quinnipiac University’s Physician Assistant program has been taken off of probation after two years. The PA program was originally put on probation in November 2023, after numerous students had filed complaints. These complaints claimed that the PA program failed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. “My understanding is that there was a 10 year accreditation visit from the Accreditation Review Commission of the physician assistant… they determined that the program was not in compliance with the accreditation standards,” Trenton Honda, dean of the School of Health Sciences said. The PA program was originally put on probation after a lawsuit filed in 2022 accused Quinnipiac officials of failing to accommodate a student’s mental health disability, according to an investigation done by The Chronicle. Additionally, “several former physician assistant students came forward in the weeks after the student filed the suit… calling the program’s environment ‘unsupportive,’ ‘militaristic,’ ‘toxic’ and ‘cutthroat.’” The program was also accused of punishing students with disabilities “by placing them on probation, suspension or dismissal instead of seeking ways on how to better support them.” In response to these allegations, a letter was sent to the Connecticut DOJ. The letter read, “The discriminatory treatment, including the culture of mental health stigma created by the PA faculty, has been a destructive force for these students and their families… We ask that your department investigate these claims and hold QU and the PA faculty accountable and responsible for any actions that you deem harmful and illegal to students, past and present,” according to The Chronicle. Since then, faculty have been working to meet these standards. “Our faculty worked incredibly hard to respond to all of the citations that they gave us,” Jocelyn Depathy, interim program director and chair physician assistant studies said. “We had incredible support from our administration… and they were instrumental in really giving us the support and resources that we needed.” After addressing concerns and citations, the Accreditation Review Commission (ARC), “came and did a repeat SITE visit to look at those things that they had said we needed to address… immediately upon them leaving, they noted no observations, which means they didn’t note anything that needed to be fixed,” Depathy said. Prior to these efforts, the university also created a non-discrimination clause, to ensure its “commitment to ‘providing equal educational opportunities and full participation for students with disabilities,’” according to the report by the Chronicle. Fortunately, the probation did not have any effects on the students. But it required “a tremendous amount of very hard work” from “dedicated expert faculty,” Honda said. Depathy also mentioned that the PA program maintained higher than average first time pass rates on the PANCE, their certifying exam. Additionally, any graduate students seeking employment six months after their graduation were employed, she added. “I want to emphasize that there has never been any question about the high quality of the education that’s provided by our expert faculty in the program,” Honda said.