Students will vote on a referendum in Student Government elections this week to make American University a sanctuary campus, which SG defines as “a campus that signifies a higher education institution which adopts policies to protect undocumented students from deportation.”
The referendum also includes demands such as preventing the University from gathering information about the citizenship status of its students, faculty and staff. Referendums passed by SG are non-binding and optional for the University to implement.
Lily Swahnberg, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs, senator-at-large and a sponsor of the referendum, said the idea came up following the Feb. 14 incident where an individual was spotted on campus wearing a jacket that said “ICE - Immigration.”
“[That] was really disconcerting for a ton of people,” Swahnberg said in an interview with The Eagle. “I was scared. I was scared for my friends, and I was scared for the people who are here and who are not documented.”
Sixteen colleges nationwide have already become sanctuary campuses, and an additional 64 colleges have shown support for adopting sanctuary campus policies, according to Immigrant Rising, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing opportunities for undocumented immigrants.
The referendum would ask the University to deny U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents access to campus property without a judicial warrant. Quinn Fitzpatrick, a junior in SPA, senator-at-large and a sponsor of the referendum, said he believes this clarification is especially important.
“Administrative warrants, which are often what ICE uses, you don’t have to comply to those; those are just ordered through ICE,” Fitzpatrick said. “A judge orders judicial warrants. In that situation, I hope we can do everything to support and protect the student, but you can’t ask the University to break the law.”
Several on-campus student organizations, such as AU League of United Latin American Citizens, co-sponsored the referendum and worked closely with the Senate to ensure their goals aligned. Other sponsors included Students for a Just Society and Sunrise American University.
Cristian Benavidez, a senior in SPA and the co-president of AU LULAC, said the organization started pushing for the University to become a sanctuary campus around the time the Undergraduate Senate started showing interest in the topic.
“We reached out to them saying, ‘Hey, we would love to work on this with you, and we need to discuss how to conjoin our initiatives,’” Benavidez said in an interview with The Eagle. “So we got together and narrowed down what it was we were asking for and came up with a more clear and unified message.”
Benavidez said that, at the end of last semester, Latino organizations on campus realized they would need to work together to tackle the Trump administration’s policies.
“What we can do is show the community that we are there for each other,” Benavidez said.
However, following the incident on Feb. 14, he felt LULAC needed to take a more aggressive stance and “do more than just community events and supporting one another.”
Benavidez said he believes this referendum is a good first step toward working with the University to address this issue.
“It at least gives students the opportunity to voice their opinions to the administration since there are so few ways for students as a collective group to do that,” Benavidez said. “I think that what is being proposed is a bargaining chip and that there is an ability for us to negotiate with the University and maybe get them to meet some of the demands but not all.”
The results of this semester’s election will be available on March 6 at 9 p.m. The University’s administration will then evaluate whether to adopt the policy.
“I really wanted just to do a poll and see who on this campus really wants to get this passed,” Swahnberg said. “It’s just about making AU a fully safe place.”
This article was edited by Payton Anderson, Tyler Davis and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Olivia Citarella, Hannah Langenfeld and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
