The past two months have exhausted Ana Guevara.
The UF information systems senior said she’s worried that some of her undocumented family members who emigrated from Nicaragua more than 10 years ago might be deported.
“It’s been emotionally, physically and psychologically draining,” said Guevara, the vice president of external affairs of Chispas UF, a student organization focused on helping immigrants.
Because of people like Gue- vara, about 40 students gathered on Turlington Plaza on Monday as part of the Day of Action protest to rally against recent events that occurred on campus, which students said were hateful, as well as President Donald Trump’s hardline stance on immigration.
Following the Turlington demonstration, about 20 students gathered in Matherly Hall to sign protest letters to send to state officials and a petition to make UF a sanctuary campus.
Guevara, 22, said students were protesting acts on campus, including the noose left in a Weimer Hall classroom, the man who visited campus wearing a swastika armband, the uprooting of the sign outside Walker Hall marking the African American Studies department and the Center for Jewish Studies and racist epithets found on a whiteboard in Anderson Hall.
The protest aimed to unite minority students, Guevara said.
The protesters also wrote on two whiteboards about how UF administration should react to these kinds of events. Some said they wanted UF President Kent Fuchs to use social media to condemn hate acts, while others said they want safe spaces on campus for underrepresented students to meet.
Sergio Brenes, a UF history and Spanish senior, said he wants to see more white students protesting on campus.
“It’s not affecting them directly, so they’re not helping,” the 22-year-old said.
Brenes said the Counseling & Wellness Center, Pride Student Union and LGBTQ Affairs helped him feel at home at UF when he first enrolled.
“I came in as a closeted gay student who’s Latino,” Brenes said. “It was all about finding the adequate resources to accept myself and get a sense of community.”
But now, Brenes said he’s afraid other students don’t have the resources he did because the center needs funding, and three directors within Multicultural and Diversity Affairs have recently left.
“I need a staffer who’s not going to leave when stuff gets hard, because I have to stay here when it’s hard,” Brenes said.
Rana Al-Nahhas, the president of Students Organize for Syria, said she attended the rally to stand in solidarity with other minority students feeling threatened in the current political climate.
“Nobody should ever be denied access to the American dream be- cause of the color of their skin, the god they worship or the language they speak,” the 21-year-old UF psychology junior said.
Contact Jimena Tavel at jtavel@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @taveljimena
More than 30 people attended Chispas’ Day of Action, where students from different communities spoke about their experiences as a result of President Donald Trump's executive order and hate speech on campus. The group called for UF to do more to make all people feel welcome.
Ana Guevara, a 22-year-old UF informations systems senior and vice president of external affairs for Chispas UF, calls for UF President Kent Fuchs to publicly denounce acts of hate speech. She said emails are not enough at the Day of Action event on Turlington Plaza on Monday afternoon.
