It’s been exactly one year since we woke up to Donald Trump as President-elect of the United States. It’s felt like a lifetime, hasn’t it? This past year has been exhausting.
In January, seven days after the inauguration, Trump signed his first travel ban which barred people from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. This affected students on our campus with one graduate student and his wife detained at Dulles Airport on his way home after visiting his family in Iran.
Over the summer, Trump and Republicans in Congress worked to repeal Obamacare, threatening the healthcare of those most at risk. In June, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, leaving us the only country in the world without a commitment to combat climate change.
In August, the violent actions of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. left an innocent woman dead. Following the rally, Trump failed to denounce the white supremacists, saying “there [was] blame on both sides.”
This September, Trump moved to end the Obama-era DACA program that gives residency status to the children of undocumented immigrants.
Last month, Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed a Title IX rollback that would make it more difficult for college students to report sexual assault on campus.
Over the past year, Trump proved to be a careless and dangerous president. Beyond his racist and sexist rhetoric, he has threatened the most vulnerable in our society with his decisions. He has admitted to sexual assault.He has bullied and insulted countless individuals and foreign leaders. It has been an exhausting year, and his actions worry our allies and empower our enemies.
However, despite these last 365 days, we must remember that while living with Trump as our president, we are in it for the long haul. Student Matthew Brown gave a speech on the night of Baltimore’s anti-Trump protest after the election.
“This is a draining process, and it’s not a sprint; It’s a marathon,” Brown said. “We are going to be in this for four years, and we need to make sure that every step of the way we are healthy and ready to go and ready to fight for what we believe.”
We are now at the one-year mark and we see hope in the way people have risen up. Activism, on campus and across the nation, has grown, with more people rushing to defend many of the causes that Trump has threatened.
The Women’s March in January was the largest mass protest in U.S. history and proved to be a powerful and uniting force. Soon after, hundreds of people — including many of our own students — gathered at BWI to protest Trump’s first travel ban.
Universities have also spoken out against Trump’s policies. Few universities support DeVos’ Title IX rollback, and Hopkins itself has pledged to remain true to Obama-era sexual misconduct policies. University President Ronald J. Daniels has expressed support for DREAMers on this campus and has vehemently condemned the travel ban.
For all we know, we have three more years of this Trump presidency. We’ve worked to protect the progress that we’ve made. We need to keep standing our ground.
