In Response to Immigrant Solidarity Demonstration Canceled Among Concerns of Negative Visibility.

The recent surge in ICE activity in Maine prompted me to check in with my alma mater through The Bates Student. I was deeply disappointed to learn that a community-organized protest was canceled out of concern that it might draw too much attention to the Bates campus and, in doing so, endanger our diverse student body, faculty, and the hardworking staff who keep Bates running year-round.

While I understand the impulse behind this decision, it reflects a broader and troubling pattern. Across the country, colleges and universities have either capitulated to the demands of the Trump administration or chosen silence in the hope of weathering the storm. This posture of risk aversion may be expedient, but it stands in direct conflict with the values Bates claims to uphold.

The Bates mission explicitly declares: “With ardor and devotion — Amore ac Studio — we engage the transformative power of our differences, cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action. Preparing leaders sustained by a love of learning and a commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world, Bates is a college for coming times.”

That mission is not passive. It is a call to action—a call to engage in civil discourse, to exercise our constitutional right to peacefully assemble, and to challenge unlawful and unjust actions by our government. If Bates is truly a college “for coming times,” then now is the moment to live those values openly and courageously, before it is too late.

Jonah Ruddy is a member of the Class of 2012.