Jabria Lyons
When U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions went on television and announced that President Donald Trump would be ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, like many students that attend NC State, I was upset. Now, I am not an undocumented student myself, so it would be unfair for me to claim that I understand any ounce of the fear, confusion, sadness and anger that NC State’s DACA recipients are feeling right now. But the news did leave me begging the question: what can I do to stop this? While I was thinking about this, other students at NC State weren’t just wondering, they were acting.
Technician reported that last Friday, there was a “Defend DACA” rally held on Stafford Commons, where NC State students protested the president’s actions to end DACA. I happened to walk by this protest while I was on a lunch break from my internship. I was extremely proud to see the few dozen students that were there, marching in solidarity with students who need the support.
While it was heartening to see so many students care enough to protest in the first place, I couldn’t help but wonder: if I weren’t at work, would I actually join them? Moreover, would the protest actually make a positive difference in the long run?
Well, I can at least hope I would have joined. More importantly, I do believe student-led protests can make a positive impact on society if they’re done thoughtfully, and if they are met with other actions such as calling our state representatives, volunteering at nonprofits and staying as informed as possible on the issue.
I think my initial hesitancy in answering both of those questions with a resounding yes lies in the fact that student-led protests on their face are audacious acts that require using a voice I am not quite sure I have. Judging by the number of students watching on Friday, instead of participating, I assumed other students aren’t sure they have that voice nor do they necessarily want to use it. It is hard to say that protests can make a huge difference, when not a lot of students want to participate in them, and I assumed this might be the case nationally.
But, I was wrong.
In fact, according to a 2015 survey conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, 8.5 percent of incoming college students across the U.S. said that they would have a “very good chance” of participating in a protest on their college campus. This may not seem like a high number, but that is nearly one in ten students, which is pretty impressive. In fact, the survey points out that interest among college students in political and civic engagement has reached its highest levels since the university began the study fifty years ago.
While this is great news for students concerned that the college protest is just a passing fad, there is still the issue of how these protests have been occurring nationally that bothered me at first.
Student-led protests are obviously not just occurring at NC State, but have been numerous and fraught with bad publicity over the past few years. The college protest has almost become a ubiquitous occurrence, and it usually makes headlines, not for promoting positive change, but for how divisive it can be.
Even if a protest on a college campus is different from all of the others, they all get lumped together into this muddied category of “students who are ruining free speech” by people who oppose or just don’t understand them. In reality, most students who protest are doing the very opposite of crying, they are instead attempting to take action against something that they find to be unfair or alarming.
In fact, unlike critics of these protests, according to a 2016 Gallup Poll most college students are not concerned that free speech is being harmed by these protests at all. As of 2016, 73 percent of college students are confident about the level of free speech protection that there is in the United States and on their campuses.
I think it shows that these protests are not an infringement on free speech, but an exercise of it. The DACA protest on Friday is a great example of the college protest done right. But, even with all of these positive statistics about protests on college campuses, and the great protest that happened last Friday, I do not believe that protesting alone is enough.
When earlier in the summer, the Affordable Care Act was saved, it wasn’t saved by protests alone. It was saved by concerned Americans who attended town halls, wrote their senators and did not stop calling their representatives. I believe DACA is worth saving, and can be saved, but it will take the same effort.
I am completely supportive of protests on our campus that are thoughtful, open and clear in their message. I am also aware that is it extremely naive to think that Friday’s protest alone, or any protest for that matter, will change anything on its own. Protesting is the easy part.
In order to really defend DACA, the protest on Friday can only be the beginning. It will take the hard work of mobilizing, calling senators and state reps, writing letters and donating time or money to organizations like the ACLU or other nonprofits, to really make a difference.
Protesting is great, and I’d love to see more of it on our campus, as long as, like Friday, it is done thoughtfully. And as long as the work doesn’t stop there.