Students from all academic levels gathered Wednesday to protest several nationwide concerns, including the reformation of the Department of Education and concerns surrounding visa statuses and deportations.
Organized by Communities Resisting Fascism, a student-led group at Iowa State, and ISU Dems, the protest drew student voices walking near Iowa State’s designated free speech zone.
Beginning at 11 a.m. at Parks Library, students gathered near a booth with information featuring brochures, signs and members of the student body tabling.
“Both at the federal and state level, there’s been a lot of attacks on public education,” Cole Lindaman, a senior in civil engineering and president of College Democrats at Iowa State, said. “At the university level, it was starting with the DEI stuff […]. People say it’s because these programs are not fair. I would say that all they do is they make sure there’s a guardrail in check that bigotry doesn’t happen.”
Binx Hilton, a freshman in the College of Design and organizer of the protest, told the Daily he feels they have been personally affected by the legislative actions over the past year.
“There was the anti-DEI bill that got The Center and the National Conference for Race and Ethnicity shutdown,” Hilton said. “I am an LGBT student. I am not happy with The Center being shut down, because along with The Center being shut down, there are scholarship opportunities at stake that were affiliated with The Center.”
In response to the Iowa Legislature and Board of Regents requests, the university disbanded The Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success–reformatting it to “The Center,” prompting a series of protests.
Hilton also said the protest was meant to emulate the nationwide “Hands Off” protests that occurred Saturday, telling the Daily that legislators should “stop touching our university.”
“The Board of Regents is all too eager to enforce laws that have not been made yet,” Hilton said. “I read their note to the University to the universities, and they said we have to quote, ‘get ahead of the curve on this,’ when there have actually not been that many bills passed yet.”
Riley Lester, a senior in kinesiology and health and another organizer of the event, said they reached out to many different organizations, encouraging them to get involved.
“We specifically reached out to maybe 50 different organizations, clubs on campuses to say, ‘Hey, guys, whether or not you’re politically active right now or not, you have to be,’” Lester said. “Taking a neutral stance at this point is taking a stance with oppression. Because we all need to stand up for students right now.”
Lester also said the ongoing issues are not a matter of politics but rather a matter of human rights.
“We emailed the ISU Republicans,” Lester said. “We emailed the ISU Dems. We emailed the Young Americans For Freedom because it doesn’t matter your partisan right now. What matters is that rights are under attack, and there is somebody that is legitimately committing actual crimes in offense.”
Lester also added that people may be distracted and do not know where to focus.
“We can focus on what’s specifically happening to our universities,” Lester said. “And that is the dismantling of the Department of Education, research funding is getting cut, as well as students being targeted for protesting.”
The organizers also encouraged students to sign a petition, gathering anonymous personal information about how students have been affected by legislative and university actions. The university’s demonstration safety team was also present.
