UTRGV students will walk out of class Thursday morning on the Edinburg campus in solidarity with undocumented students and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients.
Students are going to get out of their classrooms at 11:40 a.m. and will congregate under the Quad Tree of Solidarity, where a march will begin at noon. The march will end at the Bronc Statue in front of the Visitors Center where a rally will be held to show support for the cause.
Walkouts will happen across the nation. They are organized by La Union de Chicanxs Hijxs de Aztlán (LUCHA) in collaboration with the national organization United We Dream. The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), LUCHA, La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), the UTRGV Mexican American Studies program (MAS), the Texas Freedom Network and Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE) will host the walkout at UTRGV.
Bianca Castro, president of the Young Democratic Socialists of America and a student organizer for LUCHA, said the purpose of the event is to show support for undocumented students.
“It’s basically to show solidarity with our students and to urge our administration to create a Dreamer center,” Castro said, referring to DACA. “Currently, we have the highest [number] of DACA students in the entire state of Texas and we do not have a Dreamer center, which means that we do not have a place for them to go.”
In an article published Sept. 11 in The Rider, Student Success Vice President Kristin Croyle said about 900 undocumented students are enrolled at UTRGV.
Castro said there are other schools in Texas that have these centers available for DACA students. She said the centers are important because they make it easier for undocumented students to go through college.
“Personally, I feel like events … of this nature, they are important because they raise awareness,” Castro said. “Right now, from the information that I know … the system that is meant to assist the students is doing exactly the opposite and it’s making things harder for them, unnecessarily harder. We are all college students. We all know the struggles that we have to go through and I just think that it is terrible they have to go through an extensive struggle because of the fact that they don’t have a place to be.”
She said everyone is welcome to participate in the walkout.
