How Colleges and Universities Are Defying Trump

“We cannot afford to wait and see what happens,” another speaker said. “Why should we assume the best of [Trump] when he has said the worst?”

Carvajal and her fellow students aren’t waiting. Instead, they’re calling on NYU to become a “sanctuary campus” that offers protection to undocumented students facing deportation. “With a governmental shift that poses an increasing threat to our safety, we turn to our schools for asylum,” students wrote in a petition to the university’s administration.“We know our campus has the potential to be a sanctuary, and we demand that potential be realized.”

Nearly 100 other universities staged simultaneous walk-outs and demonstrations that day to call on their campuses offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants, in what organizers believe to be the largest wave of student demonstrations in a decade. At Rutgers University–New Brunswick, an estimated 3,000 people rallied in support of undocumented immigrants.

Movimiento Cosecha, an immigrant rights organization that launched just under a year ago, helped coordinate the nationwide push for sanctuary campuses. There is no official definition of the term, and the designation is often more political than legal. But Cosecha’s vision involves a combination of university policy and active campus solidarity. School administrators can refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities by withholding student information and barring enforcement officers from campus; students can step in to protect peers from government raids, as well as hate speech and intimidation.

In the weeks before the election, the group held a series of sit-ins outside of Trump Tower in New York to protest his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Following his win, the idea for the sanctuary campus campaign emerged “organically,” says Thaís Marques, a graduate of Rutgers University-Newark and a member of Cosecha. In the hours after Trump took the electoral college, Marques set up a web page, asking anyone affiliated with an academic institution to sign petitions aimed at their college leadership. Hundreds signed up, and after getting on a conference call with Cosecha and receiving a few planning resources, point people for each campus got started planning actions.

The movement has already had some victories. At press time, at least 28 college and university presidents had issued statements of support for undocumented students following the walk-outs. But only a few—including Reed and Wesleyan Colleges—have explicitly adopted the “sanctuary campus” label.

NYU falls into the first group. On Nov. 29, 2016, President Andrew Hamilton released a statement affirming that the university does not allow federal agencies entrance into campus buildings without permission, that student records are subject to privacy restrictions and that the university’s nondiscrimination policy applies to all members of the campus community, regardless of immigration status. “Many of you want to know that we are affording our full protection and support to everyone who lives, studies, and works at NYU,” he wrote. “I want to assure all of you that that is our goal.”

Carvajal says that while these policies are important, they don’t go far enough—declaring NYU a sanctuary campus is key. “In our current political climate, the rhetoric used by politicians and institutions is critical,” she says. “Anything short of a declaration that explicitly sends a message to the incoming administration … falls short.”

By declaring itself a sanctuary, a community sends a message that it rejects the hate and intimidation that many immigrants have faced in the wake of Trump’s win, say organizers. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that in the 10 days following Trump’s election, it received nearly 900 reports of harassment and intimidation.