In the nine months since President Trump’s inauguration, the world of higher education has seen federal funds frozen, visas revoked and select universities invited to sign a compact for special benefits. Brown is no exception, drawing significantly more direct attention during Trump’s recent term than in his first.

After the 2016 election, student activists opposed Trump through local organizing in Providence. This time around, they have established a larger presence on College Hill, urging University Hall to hold the line and reject some of the administration’s attempted incursions on the University’s independence.

Trump’s wins fill community members with dread

When Trump won the presidency — both in 2016 and in 2024 — many students expressed initial feelings of disappointment, sadness and fear.

The morning after the election was the beginning of a very “dark day” on campus, Aidan Calvelli ’19 recalled in a recent interview with The Herald. The next morning, he attended a lecture for POLS 0010: “Introduction to the American Political Process” with Professor of Political Science Wendy Schiller, where “multiple students were crying.”

Brian Cohn ’17, the president of Brown Democrats at the time, said the group had organized a watch party and attendees were eager to celebrate a victory later that night. But as the night went on and the results became more clear, “people were starting to get pretty upset,” he said.

“Campus was a very sad place the next few weeks,” Cohn added. “People were scared.”

After the 2016 election, student organizers held a nonpartisan rally on campus that was not solely directed at the election results, but rather demanded the University increase protections for students who may be affected by the new administration, including students lacking permanent legal status.

Students also expressed similar concern following Trump’s second win in 2024, with many feeling “shocked, mournful and fearful.”

“I remember feeling a lot of fear when Trump was elected,” said Simon Aron ’28, a leader of Brown Rise Up, which opposes the Trump administration’s attempt to reshape higher education. Aron said he felt nervous about the “authoritarian” rhetoric shared by his campaign.

At the time, Aron was afraid the new administration would create a “fascist regime,” he said. Now, “it’s starting to happen way faster than I even predicted.”

The White House did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment.

A focus on local policy advocacy during Trump’s first term

Amid disappointment at the national political landscape in 2017, several student activists launched a new organization for students to focus on progressive politics in Rhode Island: the Brown Progressive Activism Committee.

Calvelli, who was also chair of BPAC, said the group “tried to serve broadly as a coordinating hub for progressive groups on campus.”

“The purpose of BPAC was to give students an outlet for doing something that felt more tangible than just being depressed about the political landscape,” Calvelli told The Herald. “And Rhode Island presented a useful opportunity because its Democratic Party was so diverse.”

At the time, BPAC connected with local politicians and nonprofits to advocate for environmental laws, protections for the LGBTQ+ community and improvements to local schools, Cohn said. The group also encouraged students to submit testimony in support of criminal justice reform bills and participated in a State House committee hearing on a bill banning conversion therapy, The Herald reported in February 2017.

Since Brown Democrats’s constitution bars the group from endorsing specific candidates, Calvelli said that BPAC allowed students to “get involved in a more explicitly political way down the Hill.”

During Trump’s first term, many Brown students also joined community protests against the Trump administration’s actions.

In September 2017, the Brown Immigrant Rights Coalition joined the Providence Immigrant Rights Coalition, the Coalition of Advocates for Student Opportunities and the Providence Student Union in a rally protesting the administration’s attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, more commonly known as DACA.

Students at the time largely focused on off-campus advocacy, a result of them feeling they could make more impact in local politics, Calvelli noted.

But there was still some activism focused on campus, including efforts to protest the proposed GOP tax bill, which looked to increase income tax on graduate student stipends and tuition waivers. At the time, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 publicly denounced the bill and said she was working with the Rhode Island congressional delegation to oppose the legislation.

Brown in the spotlight during Trump’s second term

While many concerns over the Trump administration’s economic policies, immigration enforcement and treatment of minority groups have persisted during both terms, Calvelli noted the pressure on universities has reached unparalleled levels with Trump’s return to the Oval Office.

In the spring, the Trump administration froze $510 million of Brown’s federal funding.

For Calvelli, this type of direct “state repression” from the administration did not seem to be “on the horizon” during the president’s first term, he said. “The University was not really a focus of contestation in the way that Trump has made it now.”

In response to these attacks, students have pushed for change through on-campus activism.

In April, environmental group Sunrise Brown and Do Not Comply — a student group formed to oppose the Trump administration’s targeting of Brown — circulated a petition and organized a rally urging the University not to comply with the White House’s demands to unfreeze funding.

The University reached a deal with the federal government in July, restoring funding in exchange for several stipulations regulating admission practices, gender classifications on campus and the sharing of disciplinary records. But the threats did not stop there.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration invited Brown and eight other universities to sign a memo that outlined a series of commitments institutions could agree to in exchange for federal benefits. The demands included freezing tuition for five years, limiting grade inflation and capping international undergraduate enrollment at 15%.

Brown Rise Up organized an Oct. 9 protest of the Trump administration’s compact, attended by approximately 120 students and faculty members.

“The singling out of schools gives us a more important role in specifically resisting Trump,” Sunrise Co-hub Coordinator Charlotte Calkins ’27 said in an interview with The Herald. “It does feel like a very urgent thing to be standing up to the administration as a Brown student right now.”

Aron, who spoke at the rally, told The Herald that “the country is looking to us to see, do we fold or do we fight back and hold to our values?”

Last week, Paxson announced the University rejected the Trump administration’s compact.

In an Instagram post after Paxson’s decision, Brown Rise Up took some credit for the move.

“At Brown and across the nation, no one should fear deportation, imprisonment or retaliation because of who we are, where we were born or what we believe,” the post reads. “We will keep fighting until that world is a reality.”

A dampening of student activism today

Federal targeting of student activism has also played a key role in how protests and organizing have changed since 2017, according to student leaders.

Some current student activist leaders have pointed to specific federal actions that have induced fear in their groups’ members, such as the March 25 detainment of Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk. Others pointed to the recent presence of immigration enforcement on College Hill.

While Cohn said students were similarly fearful of first-term Trump administration policies, he noted that, from his experiences, this fear did not dampen engagement in activism.

Calkins said the University’s agreement with the Trump administration to share some records from the Office of Equity Compliance and Reporting has made students more fearful of engaging in campus activism.

This fear is especially prevalent among international students who may be concerned about the status of their visas and ability to reside in the country, she added.

In April, at least one Brown student and several Brown alums saw their visa status revoked, The Herald reported.

Aron said he knows of many friends who are international students and have previously attended protests, but are now keeping their distance from on-campus organizing.

This growing hesitancy to take part in protests and rallies has compelled groups, including Brown Democrats, to change how they approach activism, according to Jacqueline Zhang ’27, vice president of the group.

These new approaches include having students who may be uncomfortable taking public stances focus their contributions on behind-the-scenes protest organizing, like creating flyers and drafting social media posts on behalf of organizations. Brown Dems also hosted an activist safety training in preparation for Saturday’s No Kings protests against the Trump administration.

“Because of the current circumstances, it pushes us even more to think of creative ways for people to get involved,” Zhang said.

Despite there being many “risk factors” for engaging in student activism, Aron said that adjusting advocacy — rather than giving in — is important to provoke change.

“If we give into that fear,” he said, “the Trump administration has already won.”