Anyone else feel like a Victorian child on their death bed, right now?
We write Stevens history HOBOKEN, NJ | DECEMBER 5, 2025
VOLUME CXXIII No. 12
The student newspaper of Stevens Institute of Technology, and creator of Attila the Duck. www.thestute.com TikTok @thestute Instagram @thestute facebook.com/stevensthestute NEW STUTE EVERY FRIDAY • EST. 1904
Meet the incoming SGA President Cracking the code of Hypersonic Flight and Vice President of Operations Because of how the air lasers to ionize the gas BY JOSEPHINE CHOONG, SECRETARY
PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH HALTON
BY SERENA PANUCCI, NEWS EDITOR Jeylan Jubran and Samuel Strassburger have recently been elected Student Government Association (SGA) President and Vice President of Operations
(VPO), respectively, following last week’s campus-wide vote, marking a new leadership chapter as Stevens students head into the spring semester. After a decisive win in last week’s elections, Jubran and Strassburger say they are both “excited
Stevens participates in Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week BY RISHI PRABHAKAR, CONTRIBUTOR Two weeks ago, Stevens organized the Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The week consisted of two events — a sandwich-making event on Monday, November 17, and a Hunger and Homelessness Resource Fair on Thursday, November 20. Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week is a nationwide initiative with the goal of raising awareness about food insecurity, housing instability, and directing community members towards the resources available that exist to combat these concerns. The initiative was started by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness in 1975, and occurs every year the week before Thanksgiving. The first event took place on Saturday, November 13, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Trinity Lutheran Church. Stevens students volunteered to cook and serve dinner to those in Hoboken experiencing homelessness and housing instability. NEWS (2-3)
Introducing the incoming SGA President and Vice President of Operations Learn more about Jeylan Jubran and Samuel Strassburger and what their policies will be! FEATURE (4)
Human Rights Month Discover the different ways Stevens organizations have been acitivists for Human Rights!
The second event took place on Wednesday, November 17, from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the second floor of the UCC. Students made sandwiches for the Hoboken Shelter, a local organization that provides help to Hoboken’s homeless population in a variety of ways, from serving them hot meals every day to helping them find new homes. Finally, the third event, the Hunger and Homelessness Resource Fair, took place on Saturday, November 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the UCC lobby. The purpose of this event was to connect Stevens students with local Hoboken organizations centered around combating food insecurity, homelessness, and housing instability. Students attending the event could walk around, talk to representatives of the organizations present, learn about food insecurity statistics, and complete a mini-service activity.
PHOTO COURTESY OF UWAYLCSC.ORG
SCIENCE (6)
Hypertension? Tech + Health? Bird organs? Read about what’s going on in the world of science. PULSE (10)
Read answers from the Stevens community to our weekly Roving Reporter, plus solve our weekly puzzle and sudoku.
and shocked” by the results and ready to begin their terms in January 2026. The pair, who ran a campaign centered on transparency, student advocacy, and revitalizing SGA’s internal systems, explained that the
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Today, it takes 15 hours to fly from Sydney to Los Angeles. But what if that time could be shortened? What if crossing half the planet only takes one hour? How would we view the world? That’s the premise behind Dr. Nicholaus Parziale’s latest research on hypersonic flight. Parziale’s focus on hypersonic flight began during his childhood, where he had a passion for mechanical and electrical things and worked on cars with his dad. Parziale got involved in hands-on lab work when he worked with Tim Singler in a lab at Binghamton University. During his graduate classes at the California Institute of Technology, he researched experimental fluid mechanics and worked with Joe Shepherd and Hans Hornung. While such flights seem impossible by today’s standards, military planes prove that they are closer to reality than they seem. To fly between Los Angeles and Sydney in an hour, these planes would have to travel at Mach 10 or 10 times the speed of sound. Military planes can travel at Mach 2 and Mach 3, or around two and three times the speed of sound. However, what’s standing in the way is the heat and turbulence generated by these flights.
around aircraft behaves differently at low and high speeds, aerospace engineers must first understand how airflow works at higher Mach speeds. Incompressible flow happens at lower speeds, and the air density remains constant. But at higher speeds, compressible flow occurs, and the air compresses. However, Morkovin’s hypothesis, formulated by Mark Morkovin, claimed that airflow behaves similarly at both low and high speeds. If it were true, hypersonic planes wouldn’t need an entirely different design approach. However, there isn’t enough experimental data to decisively prove the theory. Providing that data to prove Morkovin’s hypothesis was the subject of Parziale’s new study. Titled Hypersonic Turbulent Quantities in Support of Morkovin’s Hypothesis, it was published in Nature Communications on November 12. The authors include Parziale and six PhD students: Ben Segall, Tim Keenoy, Jaden Kokinakos, Jett Langhorn, Ahsan Hameed, and David Shekhtman. Parziale noted that he’s lucky to have great PhD students and is thankful to them for all their hard work. Within the study, they performed careful measurements of hypersonic turbulence. The team used
krypton without distributing the gas. That made the krypton atoms form a straight, glowing line. After waiting, they would observe how the line evolved. From the movement, you could learn more about turbulence and how much the flow is oscillating. Parziale observed how it was similar to if you dropped a leaf into the swirling flow beneath a bridge, the leaf would translate and spin. From these experiments, it was discovered that at Mach 6’s turbulence behavior is similar to that incompressible flow, which occurs at low speeds. While Morkovin’s hypothesis isn’t entirely confirmed, the study suggests that hypersonic planes don’t need a different design. It would simplify the process and make computational demands more doable. Parziale’s next objective is to continue to expand the parameter space to test Morkovin’s hypothesis, which means higher Mach and Reynolds numbers. “If we can build planes that fly at hypersonic speed, we can also fly them into space, rather than launching rockets, which would make transportation to and from low Earth orbit easier,” Parziale says. “It will be a game-changer for transportation not only on Earth, but also in low orbit.”
NATIONAL NEWS SNAP’s recent updates affect millions of Americans in program BY SEAN ANDERSON, NEWS WRITER The month of November brought about many significant updates to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). The month began with delays to funding being procured by those in the program due to the government shutdown and actions in the Supreme Court. Following this, it was announced that
SNAP allotment was to be reduced for the month. Changes were also made to eligibility requirements for applying to the program, and the government has continued to take action to reduce fraud in the program. SNAP, which was previously called the Food Stamp Program, dates back to 1939 and was made permanent in 1964 following the passing of the Food Stamp Act. Since then, the program has grown great-
ly, and as of 2024, it has approximately 41.7 million participants per month. Because of the government shutdown, growing concerns were raised in October about how SNAP benefits would be affected by the shutdown should it continue into November. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted that “though funding for the SNAP program is mandatory, the ability to send out ‘food stamp’ benefits could be affected
by a shutdown, since continuing resolutions have generally only authorized the Agriculture Department (USDA) to send out benefits for 30 days after a shutdown begins.” States notified participants in October that delays to benefits were very likely, and when the continuing resolution to temporarily reopen the government was passed, delays still occurred as benefits had to
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Federal stance on AI regulation BY TANYA AVADIA, OUTREACH CHAIR The Artificial Intelligence (AI) race has only just begun, and companies, regardless of industry or size, are all working to adapt their systems and output new technologies. However, with the rapid expansion of AI, there are several risk factors that need to be addressed. In terms of regulations, several state legislatures have adopted strict AI policies that mandate companies to be transparent, prevent
dangerous use cases, and restrict the collection of private and personal data of their users. At the federal level, a draft of an executive order was leaked, which stated that President Trump is considering curtailing these state-level laws. For context, four states—Colorado, California, Utah and Texas—have passed laws to set rules on AI usage in private sectors. The main objective of these laws is primarily related to everyday adaptation of AI. For example, many employ-
ers use AI to sweep through resumes even though it is possible for AI to make mistakes, which could lead to discriminatory practices when hiring. While these states’ lawmakers have enacted heavy legislation, many states have passed some form of AI policy. Some examples include banning the use of deepfakes in elections, placing rules on the government’s own use of AI, or blocking the ability to use AI to create nonconsensual porn. Based on the draft executive order leak, President
Trump aims to crack down on heavy AI reform at the state level by withholding federal funding or challenging state laws in court. The argument against regulating AI is that having strict rules will hinder the innovation of U.S. companies and allow China to get ahead of the U.S. in the AI race. Additionally, President Trump believes some of the state legislation is producing “woke AI.” Additionally, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise also shared that House Republi-
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