UVA rejected the Trump administration’s Compact for Excellence in Higher Education on Friday, Oct. 17, mere hours after more than a thousand people — including students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the Charlottesville community — rallied on UVA’s lawn to demand that Interim President Paul Mahoney and the UVA Board of Visitors turn down the offer.
The administration first sent the 10-page Compact to nine universities across the country, including UVA, on Oct. 1, urging them to agree to a list of requests in exchange for priority access to federal research funds.
The requests would have created sweeping changes to universities’ hiring and admissions practices, foreign student enrollment and culture so that they aligned with President Trump’s political agenda.
Friday’s rally was part of a coordinated set of protests hosted across the nine schools that first received the document from the Department of Education. Read more from Cavalier Daily here, and additional background on the Compact here.
After The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first university to decline participation in the compact, the Trump administration expanded the preferential funding offer to all US colleges, but rejections continued to roll in from additional universities who first received the offer, according to reporting from Inside Higher Ed and Arizona Luminaria.
Shortly after the rally on Friday, UVA became the fifth school and first public university to reject the Compact, Inside Higher Ed reported.
UVA’s rejection of the Compact followed an outpouring of opposition to the document from university students, alumni, faculty and beyond. Throughout October, UVA’s Faculty Senate, UVA’s Student Council, UVA’s Chapter of the American Association of University Professors and Virginia state senators all released statements or letters urging Mahoney to reject the deal.