University of Arizona faculty protested the Trump administration’s compact outside Centennial Hall on Oct. 10.

On Oct. 1, UA was one of nine schools to receive the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a set of conditions to agree to in exchange for better access to federal funds.

As of Oct. 20, President Suresh Garimella stated that UA will not initially sign the Compact and offered a “Statement of Principles,” outlining non-negotiables and criticism of the initial Compact.

While the faculty senate opposes the measure, at the time of the protest, UA administration had not yet made it clear whether they would agree to the terms.

On Oct. 9, the office of UA President Garimella sent out an email to the university community that said, “We recognize that this proposal has generated a wide range of reactions and perspectives within our community and beyond. Working with the Arizona Board of Regents, we are thoroughly reviewing the compact to understand its full scope and implications. We are also engaging shared governance leaders representing faculty, staff and students and other leaders across the state and nation to gather their input.”

Just after 10:00 a.m., Lars Fogelin, an associate professor at the School of Anthropology, addressed a crowd of faculty and United Campus Workers of Arizona representatives.

As part of the conditions stated in the compact, “…all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives, will abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events except in cases in which external events have a direct impact upon the university.” 

“What they are asking us to do is to shut the f— up,” Fogelin said. “That is their goal. It is not to foster dialogue. It is not to foster free speech.”

Fogelin criticized the UA President Garimella’s lack of communication and inaction.  

“He [Garimella] does not teach the classes,” Fogelin said. “He does not do the research. He does not do anything other than sit in that goddamn office and figure out what the hell he’s doing.”

Other sections of the compact limit participants in the Student Visa Exchange Program to 15% of the undergraduate population and enforce sex and gendered language interpretation according to reproductive function and biological processes.

 “For students, it has some severe implications for what they can learn, what they can study, what can be taught and only in the negative,” Andrew Curley, an associate professor from the School of Geography, Development and Environment, said. “It only restricts what’s accessible to them.”

“There’s ideas that I think we should talk about like freezing student tuition,” Curley said. “I think we all ought to have that conversation, but not at the cost of academic freedom.”

UA and the eight other institutions have a deadline of Nov. 21 to sign.

“We’re not being asked as faculty what we think about it,” Curley said. “I think Garimella probably knows what the majority of us feel, but … there’s not a dialogue right now.”

The demonstrations will continue weekly on Fridays at 10:00 a.m., on the west side of Centennial Hall, just south of the Women’s Plaza of Honor. 

Other schools that received the compact include Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So far, MIT, Dartmouth University, the University of Virginia, Brown, USC and UPenn have all rejected the compact.