College campuses have always been a melting pot of different ideas and opinions, but lately, these opinions have been manifesting themselves into verbal attacks. At the University of Maryland during the university’s Social Justice Day students found graffiti supporting Donald Trump, the most popular being “Deport Dreamers” and “Wall”.
This is a reference to The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which gives undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children a path toward permanent residency legal status if they attend an institution of higher education or serve in the military. Those who are protected by the Act are called “dreamers”.
When students reported the graffiti to the student union, they refused to remove it, claiming it would be a violation of “free speech”. Students were angry, but none were surprised.
“Well, of course, I was shocked but not very surprised. During the election, Trump supporters did the same thing in the middle of the night and wrote #trump2016 and so on. That feeling of shock, of course, turned to anger when I found out that the student union won’t remove it because it’s considered free speech,” said junior Brandon Caroll.
During his campaign, Trump voiced his strong opposition towards the DREAM Act and promised to “terminate it immediately”, thus deporting at least 750,000 immigrants who came to the United States as children. However, since then Trump has said that dreamers should “rest easy, his administration is not after dreamers but criminals“. Although, as I covered in a previous article, many of those being arrested are being arrested for frivolous violations like driving tickets, including those protected by the DREAM Act.
How can our “dreamers” rest easy when it’s their President’s rhetoric that fosters hateful speech like the graffiti found at the University of Maryland. Many Trump supporters do want to deport “dreamers” because that is what their candidate promised to do during his campaign.
We have seen in the recent months since Trump’s election that hate incidents towards immigrants have increased, the incidents at the University of Maryland are just a reflection of this. This not even an isolated attack, a noose was found at University of Maryland’s fraternity house Phi Kappa Tau just last week. The noose is a symbol of murder, it is a reference to the lynchings of blacks that occurred for centuries in the United States. It represents a history of racism, and the University of Maryland administration are currently investigating the matter as a hate crime.
Similar hate speech like the graffiti is not only found on college campuses but all across Trump’s new America. Hispanic and Latino families have reported having their property vandalized with words like “Go Home” or “Trump”. Students have been attacking their Hispanic classmates with chants of “Build that wall”, copying the words of our President and one of the infamous chants he encourages at his rally. This type of attacks should not be fostered by our own President.
Hate speech and acts like the “deport Dreamers” graffiti and the noose found at the University of Maryland may have a place in Trump’s America, but they have no place in mine.
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