Ramapo’s American Federation of Teachers (RAFT) chapter has been active on campus this semester, taking steps to combat what they feel is an attack on their union and the education system as a whole by the Trump administration.
“At Ramapo, as far as I know, there’s been zero problem [with ICE],” Edward Shannon, professor of literature and the local AFT president, said in an interview. “The policies that the Trump administration [are] rolling out run counter to the values of the AFT … We want to protect people if they feel like they’ve been wrongly treated. So that was the first thing we did this semester,” he continued.
RAFT has put up fliers across campus in both Spanish and English informing passersby what to do if they are approached by ICE.
As part of their union contract, AFT has access to 50% of the bulletin boards across campus. Typically, AFT will send Shannon material to post, and he and his team will place signs throughout the buildings as they deem necessary. The thought behind AFT sending the ICE posters, according to Shannon, is that members of AFT, students and their family members may be in a tenuous position in terms of their immigration status.
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, ICE partnerships with local law enforcement have tripled, and there have been multiple instances of college students being detained by ICE in recent months. This is all part of Trump’s day one executive order called “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” which states that “It is the policy of the United States to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens.”
Also of concern to Shannon and AFT this semester is the recent attacks on unions coming from Trump and Elon Musk. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which works to protect workers rights, was sued by Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to take power away from the organization in November. Since then, Trump has fired multiple NLRB board members.
“It’s really troubling,” Shannon said about the union attacks. “If you’re not covered by a union, an administrator could walk in the door and say ‘you’re fired’… [Unions are] really important in terms of academic freedom,” he continued.
In covering the importance of unions, Shannon used an example from Texas, which is not a heavily unionized state, where teachers are being told what they can and cannot say about the Civil War, and the use of Prager University videos — which are built by a social media company with a conservative bent — in classrooms. One video features an animated Christopher Columbus saying, “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”
“It’s ironic,” Shannon said. “The rhetoric coming out of the current administration is that college teachers are indoctrinating people with this crazy ideology… [But] Prager University is an explicitly ideological entity.”
Among the protections RAFT provides for professors at Ramapo, the school has to provide a safe workplace as well as work with RAFT on finding solutions to issues. Shannon believes Ramapo President Cindy Jebb has done a sufficient job in her first four years in the role, working with RAFT to find solutions.
“[Jebb] is a huge improvement over the previous administration,” Shannon said. “She believes in a liberal arts education… And obviously she is a person of great integrity,” he continued.
Another area RAFT has focused on this semester is the continuing funding cuts that face public universities such as Ramapo. As part of Trump’s administration, tens of billions of dollars in funding are at stake.
“They’ve already started cutting back on grants [at Ramapo],” Shannon said. “Grants employ students, you’re going to lose student jobs, we’ve seen that happen already,” he continued.
As the semester comes to an end, RAFT is putting an emphasized focus on working with the current administration to ensure Ramapo maintains its institutional values.
“The point of higher education is not just to teach classes, the point is to expand knowledge,” Shannon said. “We’re working collaboratively with [Jebb] so she has to work through the faculty and the professional staff.”
wjackso2@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @Ramapoaft, Instagram
