Solidarity With Immigrant & International Students: Make UW Madison a Sanctuary Campus! (Petition)

Sign and share our petition!: bit.ly/uwsancpetition

To: Jennifer Mnookin, Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
From: [Your Name]

As a result of the policies recently implemented by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, we may see mass arrests, imprisonments, and deportations of students who have lived the majority of their lives in the United States and have been educated in American classrooms. We have already seen the revocation of student visas at this very campus with minimal, opaque justification.The administration’s policies have also aggressively targeted the freedom of expression that is an essential and fundamental tenet of higher education in the United States. Students have been targeted for revocation of their immigrant status on the basis of First Amendment protected speech alone, and the president has threatened to expand this oppression to citizens as well. Other institutions have been pressured by the university to limit the free expression of their own students under pain of revocation of federal funding.

These issues – protections for vulnerable students, academic freedom, and free speech – are fundamentally interrelated. Without freedom of expression it becomes infinitely easier to oppress vulnerable members of our community, and without those very voices it becomes infinitely easier to take our freedoms of expression. The violent and tyrannical actions of the administration on these issues have prompted terror for our students and their families, and it is now a crucial time to defend the protective policies and fundamental values that are under threat from an increasingly authoritarian administration.

We will not stand for compliance with the president’s oppressive, racist and reactionary policies. Our demands, as listed below, demonstrate the minimum that UW must do to protect their most vulnerable students and defend higher education’s commitment to free speech and open expression. As stated by the UW-Madison Mission Statement, the university MUST “Embody, through its policies and programs, respect for, and commitment to, the ideals of a pluralistic, multiracial, open and democratic society.”