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Mizzou wrestling’s Aeoden Sinclair stares off in the distance during a tournament. Sinclair won a gold medal at the U20 World Wrestling Championships on Friday in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Under a driving Juneau rain, dozens of new students at the University of Alaska Southeast gathered Friday for orientation and to kick off the fall semester. This year, the public university saw a boost in enrollment of out-of-state students, which officials and students say is largely due to a new policy eliminating the non-resident tuition rate.

UAS piloted the new tuition policy this year, called Alaska Unlocked, which offers the standard in-state tuition rate for all undergraduate courses, regardless of the student’s residency.

That’s resulted in an estimated 36% increase this year in out-of-state students enrolling at UAS compared to last year, according to university officials.

“We are so thrilled with that much of an increase,” said UAS Chancellor Aparna Palmer, in an interview after her welcoming remarks to students at the Egan Library. “We know that a high percentage of our graduates stay in Alaska and work in Alaska within one year of graduation. And so most of these students are our future Alaskans.”

New students have arrived from 28 states, according to university data, with the top home states including Washington, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota and Wisconsin. 

The in-state tuition rate was a draw for 22-year-old Nicole Wilson of Phoenix, Arizona. After classes at community college, she enrolled at UAS to pursue a bachelor’s degree in marine biology with a focus on mammals. “I decided to come here both based on the in-state tuition and also because it was such, like, an ‘open to marine biology’ type school. My original plan was to go out to Hawaii, but it’s extremely expensive from out of state,” she said. 

Wilson said housing was also a factor. “I did the math. If I were to take a dorm, which I would have had to, at any of the major universities in Arizona, it was actually more expensive than coming out to Alaska,” she said.

Cost of housing was the main consideration for 20-year-old Owen Kellon of Portland, Oregon, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences. “It was the bigger concern when it came to the cost of schooling, just because tuition was like a couple hundred bucks per class, which is perfectly reasonable. It’s about how much I was paying back at my community college in Portland, but the housing cost was the biggest factor.”

The standard in-state tuition rate is expected to be available across the University of Alaska system next year. Earlier this month, the UA Board of Regents moved to eliminate out-of-state tuition rates for all locations and degree types, aiming to draw more students to Alaska. 

Currently, out-of-state tuition is double to quadruple the amount of resident tuition, depending on degree type. The Board of Regents is expected to take up a final vote on the policy change in November. 

UAS has the smallest student population of Alaska’s public universities, with roughly 1,800 students last year across campuses in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka.

This year’s preliminary enrollment data shows roughly the same number of students as last year, signalling Alaskan student enrollment may have declined. But Palmer emphasized that it’s too soon to tell, as enrollment numbers are subject to change in the next few weeks with more Alaska students possibly signing up for dual enrollment programs or classes beginning later in the fall.

This year, UAS saw a 21% increase in applications from out-of-state students, and a 36% increase in newly enrolled out-of-state students. More than 80 new out-of-state students have enrolled this year, compared to 60 students last year, according to university officials.

UAS is an open access enrollment institution, Palmer noted. “What that means is, no matter where you are in life, whether you just graduated from high school, in high school, or whether you’re, you know, in your sixties or seventies, there is a way in which you can access UAS,” she said.

Most students are working adults or part-time students, Palmer said, and can enroll in classes in-person or online. “So, we do have a really diverse group of students,” she said.

In Juneau, new students had a jam-packed schedule for orientation week. On Friday, students were welcomed by UAS administrators, a Tlingit elder and student leaders, followed by a campus tour and briefings on campus resources, student clubs, tutoring, career counseling, and anti-discrimination and Title IX rights and reporting. 

Students expressed excitement for the new school year and to be in Alaska, including Owen Kellon of Oregon.

“I love the rain,” he said. “ I am excited to see how the winter months will look like with only like six hours of sunlight. I’m scared, but I’m also excited.”

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Anchorage police say an officer had emergency lights and a siren activated before a cruiser collided with a taxi, killing two people. The investigation could take months.

On Alaska’s primary election day, NBC News — citing unidentified sources — reported that the U.S. Department of Justice has issued grand jury subpoenas as it investigates whether Petersburg candidate Dan J. Sullivan may have somehow violated federal law. 

If that’s true, subpoenas haven’t reached Sullivan, currently running third in this week’s election and the person that incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan has accused of running a sham campaign.

Subpoenas also haven’t reached anyone in the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola as of Friday, according to the campaign. That includes Anton McParland, Peltola’s former campaign manager, who is still with the campaign. 

Jalen Lee, a spokesman for the Alaska Democratic Party, said on Thursday that no one at the party has gotten a subpoena. 

Amber Lee, a consultant who helped Dan J. Sullivan start his campaign, said on Thursday that she has not been subpoenaed. Lee is no longer working with Sullivan’s campaign.

A spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Elections said no one with the division has received a subpoena about Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign. 

Dan J. Sullivan said by email on Thursday that he has not received a subpoena. He said he’s refraining from saying more about the issue until he understands more about what’s happening.

In July, NBC News reported that the U.S. Attorney’s office and acting Alaska Attorney General Cori Mills were looking for evidence of wire fraud or a conspiracy to deprive Alaska voters of a free and fair elections process, which could be a civil rights violation.

Reagan Zimmerman-Hartzheim, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska, said that under DOJ policy, she could neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.

Throughout his campaign, Dan S. Sullivan has called Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign fake, and a trick to deceive Alaska voters. Dan J. Sullivan, also a registered Republican, has denied that claim.

“My intention is not to trick people,” Dan J. Sullivan told the New York Times in an interview this month. “I would hope people are informed enough to know the difference between an incumbent senator and a teacher.”

Dan J. Sullivan, a Republican, remains on track to advance to November’s general election, alongside Dan S. Sullivan, Peltola and a fourth person. Progressive Democrat David Leslie led the race for that spot on Friday. 

A spokesperson for Dan S. Sullivan’s re-election campaign did not return emails about the possible Department of Justice investigation.

Ahead of this week’s statewide primary election, President Donald Trump took to social media with a statement that closely resembled Dan S. Sullivan’s remarks. 

In the statement, the president claimed Dan J.’s candidacy is the result of “trickery” by “Crooked, Radical Left Dumocrats” who put up another Dan Sullivan “to take Votes away from our Great Senator of the same name.”

The Alaska Democratic Party was not involved in Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy, both Sullivan and the party have said repeatedly.

“I have not spoken to Mary (Peltola). I wouldn’t even know who to speak to,” Dan. J. Sullivan told his hometown newspaper, Petersburg Pilot, in June. 

In the Times interview, Dan J. Sullivan suggested he was worried about the possibility that he could face federal investigation.

“I’m just a guy, and they’re scary,” he said. “Whether you’ve done something right or wrong, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

Across the country, federal judges are tracking an increasing number of ungrounded, politically motivated prosecutions by the Department of Justice. 

These include high-profile failed prosecutions against anti-ICE protesters in Chicago, a man who threw a sandwich at a federal official in Washington, D.C., and a man the president accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C.

Last weekend, new U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said he would take the president’s views into consideration when making decisions on prosecutions. 

Traditionally, the Department of Justice has acted independently from presidents and has sought to preserve that independence. 

In 1973, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy both resigned rather than follow President Richard Nixon’s orders to fire a special prosecutor examining the Watergate scandal. Those resignations spurred impeachment proceedings against Nixon.

Last month, the U.S. Senate confirmed Blanche in office by a 50-49 vote. Dan S. Sullivan, who voted “yes,” was a decisive vote in favor of Blanche’s confirmation. 

Aubrey Wieber is the director of the 907 Initiative, an organization opposing Dan S. Sullivan’s re-election. 

Wieber said he doesn’t know if Dan S. Sullivan is working with the Trump administration to manufacture false claims, but he does see the accusations as part of a broader national pattern, with Trump attempting to sow doubt about elections in general.

“I do think this is bogus,” he said of the accusations against Dan J. Sullivan. “Look how many investigations and how many people have looked into this, and no one has found any indication that Dan J. Sullivan is a sham candidate.”

In the just-completed primary election, third-party groups spent millions of dollars to advertise fringe candidates in hopes that they would finish in the top four and advance to the November general election. Dan J. Sullivan wasn’t generally targeted by those ads.

“If this is the ace in the hole,” Wieber asked, “Don’t you think you would spend to make sure that he makes it into the top four?”

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