Last spring, as police arrested protesting students on New York City campuses, I wrote to you with reflections from my perspective as a campus pastor. In that message, I promised that I would not delay in writing again, if and when it was warranted. Now that one our campuses, Columbia University, has become a front line in the current presidential administration’s war on higher education and academic freedom, I feel compelled to write to you again, if only to share with you that what may seem like political gamesmanship is coming at a significant cost to very real college students here and now.
If you have been following the news, you may not be surprised to hear that this spring has been quite difficult for students at Columbia. The campus gates continue to be locked and to access campus, students must stand in long lines where they are filmed nearly constantly by news crews while just trying to get to class. The government’s threats to withhold university funding have led to profound uncertainty on campus—will research continue? Will job offers, already made, be rescinded? Will their programs continue to function? A young man I know uprooted his life last semester to move here from another country for a research fellowship that may not exist next week. He just doesn’t know.
More recently, ICE and DHS agents have been roaming the neighborhood on the hunt for student activists, which has led to an atmosphere of fear and anxiety among students of all citizenship statuses, not least because of the university’s relative silence after the illegal detention of student activist Mahmoud Khalil. There are undocumented students who are quarantining in their dorm rooms for days on end, afraid to leave for fear of being picked up and deported from their own campus. Many of them were not even involved in the protests.
Now, Columbia has acceded to the demands of the Trump administration to curtail free academic thought and political speech on campus through increased surveillance and policing of students and faculty. I cannot overstate the chill this has sent through campus. Students are outraged and saddened by what they understand to be the university’s abandonment of them and of its own values. Many of them also fear speaking up because of the very serious consequences that it could entail, from being doxxed, arrested, or detained, to losing out on future academic or career opportunities.
To be clear, the policies both of the government and the university administration affect the
entire student body. Frankly, the students I know are terrified. Whether or not they are personally politically active, they are being treated by the government, the media, and their own university as dangerous threats to be contained, rather than young adults seeking to learn, grow, and contribute to their communities. Sadly, most no longer believe that their university has their academic interests or even their safety in mind, as it makes decisions.
As a campus pastor, I fundamentally understand my call to ministry as a call to love the students. This can mean many things: supporting them materially and spiritually, encouraging them, challenging them to change and grow, inviting them to hold justice and mercy together in complex times. And to love them also means not remaining silent when they are abused or forsaken by the institutions entrusted with their care. I know this is a complicated time. I don’t envy the position of any university administrator right now. And yet, it needs to be stated clearly that students are not threats to be mitigated, nor are they pawns whose welfare can be traded for political favor or funding. The students of Columbia—and all students—are beloved children of God to whom the university has a profound responsibility. Even the ones whose opinions may be unpalatable to those in power. Columbia students—and all students—deserve a university education that encourages the free exchange of ideas, seeks to nurture critical thinking and care for others, and centers student wellbeing and growth.
In the midst of all this chaos,
The Vine has been doing its best to create safe, supportive places for students to gather, speak openly, and experience love and grace. We have weekly dinners where students can share their worries and hopes, and pray together. We provide pastoral care to students in distress. We make sure students know they have trusted adults in the city to whom they can turn in times of crisis. Now, more than ever, it feels like these simple things matter tremendously. Thank you for your support, which enables us to be there for these young adults when they are feeling abandoned on many sides.
I don’t know what will happen next. Whatever the future brings,
The Vine is committed to loving students, to centering their needs, and supporting them however we can. We are committed to building Christian communities of mutual support and action that empower students to be courageous in imagining a future in which we are connected, not divided. None of this is happening in isolation and I am so grateful to you for being part of the broader community of love and support that buoys our students in challenging seasons like this one.
This semester, we have been reading the letters of St. Paul in our campus ministry gatherings. We have been thinking together about Paul's call to an ethic of community life that centers the needs of its most vulnerable members. With that in mind, I want to share with you my heartfelt prayer that the welfare of the students, especially those who are most vulnerable, might become the priority in any institutional decision-making to come, both at Columbia and beyond, just as I pray that the most vulnerable among us would be the priority in the decisions made by our government. Thank you for your prayers for our students, university faculty, and our ministry in this difficult time. They mean the world.
The Rev. Becca Seely
Pastor & Executive Director, The Vine NYC