Via Yuki Iwamura/The Associated Press

Chloe Bercovitz

News Editor

Earlier this year, a 30-year-old PhD student was dragged into a car by masked-men and driven across multiple state lines. The next day, she was 1500 miles away from her home. 

Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE following the publication of an op-ed urging for her university to recognize the Palestinian genocide. According to The Tufts Daily, she wrote that “credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter.”

Since the 1950s, the Secretary of State has held the authority to determine if an individual poses a “national security threat.” A representative of the Turkish consulate went to ICE offices, and they refused to disclose Ozturk’s forced whereabouts – her visa was revoked. 

Her story is far from an anomaly; thousands of student visas have been revoked this year in the USA.

The first amendment protects one’s freedom of expression, and further, peaceful assembly. This tapestry extends to the freedoms of association and privacy, as well as protection from arbitrary arrest and detention.

“However, foreign students under the Trump Administration have been given a cruel choice: censor themselves or have their education pried away.“

Regardless of the risks it entails, students have been protesting for decades. In the 19th century, U.S. college campuses saw Black protesters rise against slavery and praise the Haitian revolution. Come the 20th century, this blossomed into the civil rights movement. During the same period, campuses became loud in condemning the US involvement in foreign conflicts, such as the Vietnam War. Today, we are all surely familiar with student solidarity – whether in support of Palestine (such as Dawson’s recent involvement in the October 7th walkout), global warming, or 2SLGBTQI+ rights. 

Protesting has long been tightly woven into campus life, but most importantly, they often serve as catalysts for tangible change. Take the Greensboro sit-ins of the 1960s: they began with four Black students demanding service at a segregated lunch counter. Upon their refusal, they left – sparking a movement that inspired hundreds of students to follow their lead. Given a mixture of economic pressure and media coverage, the counter was desegregated just a few months later.

Student-run triumphs for social reforms have been successful on a global scale, as well. In the 1980s, protests in the US and Canada alike proliferated in universities as the apartheid tore South Africa apart. According to Harvard University, their diverse strategies all culminated in a single goal: “[to] pressure their universities to divest shares in companies that did business in South Africa.” Even Dawson students joined the protests alongside those from McGill, with The Plant covering both the demonstrations, as well as providing an overview of the issue itself.

Even if academic institutions claim neutrality, student voices have always – and will always prevail.

At a time when the Trump administration has retracted billions of federal funding over unauthorized protesting, institutions nationwide are caving in and kneeling down. According to the Columbia Spectator, “22 Columbia students had been suspended, expelled, or had their degrees revoked as a result of pro-Palestinian protests.” 

Similarly, at Virginia Commonwealth University, many were arrested and had their diplomas temporarily revoked over a peaceful protest. There were no speeches – no chants and no tents. Students gathered on the lawn until the police came. The mere right to protest has become a threat to this administration. 

By taking away the rights and freedoms of students, the very institution that is education has become weaponized. Well-earned degrees are a conditional privilege. In a first world country, education is suddenly devalued.

According to Inside Higher Ed, recent policy allows “immigration officials [to] have the ‘inherent authority’ to terminate students’ legal residency status in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System ‘as needed’.” This means that any arrest of an immigrant-student likely leads to deportation. ICE has absolute authority in entering campuses. Under the scope of student protest, authorities claim that the reason is “terrorism,” which is a charge that masks the act of racial profiling.

Since the beginning of his term, Donald Trump’s administration has undergone efforts in dismantling the Department of Education. Alongside a myriad of other things, the department is responsible for administering the student loans that allow low-income families to attend university. According to the BBC, in July the supreme court ruled that half the department’s workforce – more than 1,000 people – are to be fired.

Given that the Department of Education plays a vital role in keeping low-income families in universities, this action effectively excludes the same demographic that tends to demand change from these spaces of activism. Stripping away this means of empowerment consolidates the Trump administration’s control. Cutting the workforce in half does much more than simply weaken it – it risks restructuring and destroying the diversity of the student body itself. It poses an existential threat to students’ ability to organize, protest, and even remain in school. 

“Student protests are far more than simply a right for those who choose to exercise it; it is a pillar of democracy itself.“

By challenging authority, protests give young people a voice that can shape the institutions they belong to, all while embodying the very principles of free-speech and collective action. When education becomes conditional on silence, then democracy becomes conditional too.