Vanderbilt student and faculty groups urge university not to sign Trump Admin’s Higher Ed Compact
The Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United, Vanderbilt Student Government, and Faculty Senate all released statements urging the university not to sign the Trump administration’s compact.
The compact addresses collegiate issues relating to 'Equality in Admissions,' 'Institutional Neutrality,' and others.
A group of graduate students at Vanderbilt University have announced a petition that is urging administrators at the university to avoid signing President Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The Trump Administration’s compact urges administrators to focus their attention on issues such as: “Equality in Admissions,” “Nondiscrimination in Faculty and Administrative Hiring,” “Institutional Neutrality,” “Foreign Entanglements,” and other areas.
Specifically, the document includes a section on “enforcement,” that outlines how universities who sign onto the compact will be required to “hire an external party to conduct, an independent, good faith, empirically rigorous, and anonymous poll of its faculty, students, and staff, providing them the opportunity to evaluate the university’s performance against this compact.”
The compact continues by stating that “Adherence to this agreement shall be subject to review by the Department of Justice. Universities found to have willfully or negligently violated this agreement shall lose access to the benefits of this agreement for a period of no less than 1 year.”
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Following the invitation being originally sent out to nine universities, including Vanderbilt, the Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United started a petition titled: “Vanderbilt - Don’t Sign Trump’s Fascist Compact,” as reported by The Vanderbilt Hustler.
In addition to the graduate union’s petition, Vanderbilt’s Faculty Senate and student government released a joint statement that urged the university to choose not to sign onto the compact.
Specifically, the Faculty Senate met in an “emergency session” where 150 faculty members who do not serve on the senate were in attendance.
The Faculty Senate approved during the session a resolution that opposes the Compact due to how it “threatens to introduce government micromanagement and massive overregulation of higher education,” according to one professor on the senate.
The Vanderbilt student government also released a statement that was signed on by members of other student governments at Brown University, Dartmouth College, MIT, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia.
The statement from the student government outlines how members of Vanderbilt’s student government believes that the Trump Administration’s compact “could systemically alter the mission of higher education and erode the independence that has long defined our universities.”
“We must not allow these attempts to control what can be taught, studied or spoken on our campuses,” continues the student government statement.
Campus Reform contacted Vanderbilt University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
