Georgetown University students joined around 200 protesters outside the Department of Education (DOE) in an April 4 rally opposing President Donald Trump’s moves to dismantle the agency.
The “Hands Off Our Schools” rally, organized by student governments at five universities, including Georgetown, saw politicians and activists discuss the importance of education before crowds of students. Students protested Trump’s March 20 decision to “gut” the department as well as the administration’s crackdowns on campus free speech, diversity programs, civil rights protections, student loan forgiveness, academic programs and deportation of student visa holders.
Georgetown student body president Ethan Henshaw (CAS ’26), who organized the rally, said Trump’s policies threaten universities’ autonomy and student safety.
“We are students, many of us from private institutions, who want nothing more but to make education accessible and to make receiving that education a comfortable and welcoming experience,” Henshaw said at the rally. “We want all students to feel that they belong at our campuses and at our schools, yet I cannot ask for help from my university administration anymore because half the policies are not under their control.”
Asher Maxwell (CAS ’26), one of the rally’s organizers, said students need to come together and push back against the administration’s policies.
“This is about students,” Maxwell told The Hoya. “It’s not about politics. What they are doing to the Department of Education through executive orders, what they’re doing through ICE is coming after all of us, and we as students need to band together and stand up and say that we’re not okay with that and that we’re going to push back.”
The March 20 executive order to transfer DOE’s responsibilities to state-level education departments came after DOE announced March 11 that it would reduce its workforce by nearly 50%, raising concerns about the department’s ability to oversee federal funding for low-income and disabled students.
Catherine Hiemstra (SFS ’27) said she attended the rally in support of equal access to education.
“I’m frustrated with this administration continuing to attack students, attack education,” Hiemstra told The Hoya. “As a student who has had so much privilege in getting to have the education that I do, I recognize that not everybody has access to it, and the fact that that access is continuing to be limited is scary.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has defended the administration’s cuts as efforts to return education policy to the state and local level.
“I believe, and I know the president believes as well, the best education is that that is closest to the child, where teachers and parents, local superintendents, working together and local school boards to develop the curriculum for those students is the best way that it can happen,” McMahon said in a news conference April 2.
During the rally, speakers urged protestors to have unity in continuing to oppose Trump’s education policies.
LaJoy Johnson-Law, the Ward 8 representative on the Washington, D.C. Board of Education, spoke at the rally and said the protesters came together to fight for their rights instead of succumbing to fear.
“Fear means people are going to be still, people are going to be confused, people may be stagnant, and they may not want to do anything,” Johnson-Law told The Hoya. “But that’s not what we’re doing today. We are saying we don’t care who’s in the White House — we are moving forward. We are coming together, and we are fighting for our rights.”
In a speech during the rally, Jamaal Bowman, a former Democratic member of the House of Representatives who served as a middle school principal before taking office, said the protest represented fighting against the dangers of a miseducated society.
“This is about the concentration of power,” Bowman said at the rally. “This is about fascism, and this is about the spreading of misinformation and miseducation. And we know why. Because the more miseducated we are, and the less educated we are, the more we can be oppressed and the more we can be controlled.”
In attendance at the protests were students from Georgetown, Howard University, George Mason University, and American University, as well as Temple University in Philadelphia and D.C.-area public schools.
Sara Holler (CAS ’28), who attended the rally, said she was inspired to see students from different universities at the protest, emphasizing the widespread implications of the administration’s policies.
“It’s really inspiring to see people from many different schools come out for this and hear speakers from different universities because it shows that this is not a movement that’s necessarily centered on any one group, any one social class, university, because we’re all impacted,” Holler told The Hoya.
Nico Cefalu (CAS ’27) — the president of Georgetown’s chapter of the civil rights nonprofit American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — said he hopes D.C.-area students will continue to come together in protest.
“This is the first time we’ve actually tried to organize all of the schools in the area together,” Cefalu told The Hoya. “So I’m really hopeful this will just be the first one, and we can keep doing more of these. As people see that we got this many people to show up, we can keep growing it.”
Maxwell said the administration has been cracking down on academic freedom and making students and professors afraid to express their opinions — raising the stakes of the protest.
“The Trump administration is going after our campus free speech,” Maxwell said. “They’re going after our civil rights protections, they’re cutting funding for student aid and student programs and they’re making it so that professors feel like they can’t teach the truth so long as it disagrees with what the administration believes.”
Besides cuts to the department, Trump’s administration has repeatedly targeted and revoked the visas of international students and researchers — including one Georgetown researcher — who have engaged in what his administration claims is antisemitism.
“They’re making students think that if they express their opinion on a topic that the administration disagrees with, they could potentially be deported or arrested,” Maxwell said. “That’s not America. It’s unconstitutional, and it’s unacceptable.”
Maxwell said he was proud of the crowd who showed up despite the administration’s detention of student activists and protestors.
“In this environment, given how much the Trump administration is going out of its way to make students feel afraid, this crowd makes me feel really happy and optimistic and really proud of what the students who have come out here are saying,” Maxwell said.