RIT Against ICE continues pressure campaign

In February, Rochester Institute of Technology freshman Chad Grant helped found RIT Against ICE, along with other students and faculty members. The group today continues to pursue its goal: to persuade the school’s administration to divest from key companies that assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their operations through a nonviolent, on-campus pressure campaign. 

RIT Against ICE was formed as part of a larger campaign by the Association of American University Professors, an organization seeking to advance academic freedom and faculty input in higher education. AAUP’s “Schools Drop ICE” campaign targets universities with connections to ICE, often through contracts with companies that provide logistical and material support for deportations. 

At the center of RIT Against ICE’s campaign is a petition calling for an end to contracts between RIT and two companies with ties to ICE: Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Hilton Worldwide. At the time of writing, the petition had 1,168 signatures. The group hopes to get 4,000 signatures, or 20% of the campus’ population of students, faculty, and staff. 

“We identified Hilton and Enterprise as two corporations from the (Drop ICE campaign)  national pressure list with ties to RIT,” says Grant, adding that the university also has contracts with companies in the same industry sectors that aren’t directly involved with ICE. “So, the idea is we get them to cut ties with those that are (involved with ICE) in order to punish (the companies) and force them to stop working with ICE via economic isolation.”

RIT officials declined to comment for this article.

In Minneapolis early this year and in Los Angeles roughly a year ago, Enterprise and Hilton faced criticism for allegedly providing transportation and lodging, respectively, to ICE agents. 

Anti-ICE activists disrupted the agency’s operations by making large reservations with Enterprise and later canceling them, thus denying ICE agents access to rental vehicles. Hotels where ICE agents were thought to be staying were targeted with late-night “noise demonstrations,” with activists playing loud music, chanting, and banging drums and pots. In January, a Hilton Hotel in New York City was briefly occupied by demonstrators protesting the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE officers in Minneapolis.

Despite support among a portion of the student body and faculty, RIT Against ICE claims that it has faced harassment at the hands of university administration. 

In one incident of alleged harassment, which was filmed by RIT Against ICE, student organizers with the group were approached by campus public safety officers while filming a promotional video for their petition. In the video, organizers walked around campus with a sign showing a QR code linking to the group’s petition until public safety officers approached the students and, after asking for their IDs, informed them that they were not allowed to approach students to sign their petition or display signs inside RIT buildings without prior approval.

According to the officer in the video, RIT public safety had received reports that they were approaching other students and canvassing inside an administration building during a university-run showcase event. RIT Against ICE posted an edited video of the interaction on social media, arguing that the incident was part of a broader administration effort to limit promotion of their petition on campus, and that they were not in violation of the school’s freedom of speech policies.

“(The activist) was extremely careful to not block walkways, and he only stopped for those who expressed their interest in signing (the petition) to him. He wasn’t stopping people who didn’t already show their interest,” says Grant. 

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In another instance, student organizers of ICE Breakers, a panel discussion on anti-ICE activism organized by several official campus groups, were allegedly instructed by administrators and public safety officers not to mention RIT Against ICE’s petition at the school-sanctioned event.

“We think that RIT is worried that once they concede a victory here, that we are going to keep pushing forward for more concessions,” says Zach Jordan, another student organizer. “They seem afraid of having to change the culture of silence that’s on campus. RIT is very content to claim a neutral ground, but it’s very, very adamant on suppressing anything that will disrupt that claimed neutrality, which is, in fact, a stance of (being) pro these governmental contracts.”

Complicating matters is RIT Against ICE’s unrecognized status as a campus group, which, according to organizers, hampers its ability to organize on-campus events. However, RIT Against ICE argues that recognition as an official campus group would limit its ability to endorse other non-school-sanctioned events, campaigns, and organizations, citing the ICE Breakers event as an example.

“The (ICE Breakers panel discussion) event changed from being a student club event, in which they would have certain freedoms to have guest speakers say what they wanted, to an event under the administration-run Mosaic Center,” says Grant. “Because it’s an administration-run center, (the administration) can get control over what the panel speakers can say, as well as the general direction of audience conversations.”

RIT Against ICE organizers plan to continue their campaign into the fall semester. Grant says the organization plans to become a more visible presence in student life as a means of achieving its broader goals of campus democratization.

“We’re going to make it part of the culture,” he says. “We’re not just going to be a political campaign. We’re going to be having fun events where people can come and talk about it and make it a communal activity.”

David Wazana is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort. 

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