by Claire McCullough
It is typical for a president to issue a flurry of executive orders and they usually revoke policies from the previous administration, hoping to make an impact on the country when they first arrive. The newly elected President Trump is currently doing just that. Many of President Trump’s executive orders, especially those regarding immigration and education, have caused polarization, division and outrage in many communities across the nation. As a result, many Americans have begun to rise up in opposition, making their outrage heard. However, some others are eagerly supporting President Trump through the controversy.
On his first day in office, January 20, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” This executive order has specific applications to the Fourteenth Amendment. According to the White House website, the Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” President Trump interprets the amendment, especially the “and jurisdiction thereof,” part to mean that anyone who was not born to parents with United States citizenship are not citizens themselves. President Trump’s order states: “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were not born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’.” According to information from the BBC published on February 5, the executive order will take effect on February 19th. This quick turn-around has a lot of Americans holding their breath, wondering what the order will mean for people who were previously considered citizens of the United States. Emma Brackbill, a left-leaning freshman at McPherson College, said, “the law stating that citizens like born within the country has been around for so long, and just like that uprooting that is honestly really crazy.” Brackbill is certainly not the only one who is frustrated. Lane Polozola, Washington’s Assistant Attorney General questioned the decision as well in an interview with PBS where he asked, “Are they not subject to the decisions of the immigration courts? Must they not follow the law while they are here?” This PBS report also mentioned the fact that many lawsuits are mounting against this order as 22 states are working together to sue Trump over the issue. Despite the immediate pushback against the executive order, there are some who support it. For example, author Andrew Day of The American Conservative states, “The President is pushing the federal government toward a concept of citizenship that is bound up with the ideals of ancestry and allegiance and consistent with the notion of nationhood.”
President Trump has also begun making massive changes to education. On January 29, President Trump signed an executive order titled, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” The order says, “In recent years however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.” In order to combat this threat, President Trump specifically plans to ban “gender ideology” and topics of diversity, equity and inclusion (commonly refered to as D.E.I) such as racial bias and Critical Race Theory. The order threatens to cut government funding and support to schools that are suspected of teaching these topics. In an ABC News article, reporters Kiara Alfonseca, Kelsey Walsh and Michelle Stoddart used a statistic from the National Center for Education Statics, approximating that 11% of public school budgets come from the federal government. Losing such a large percentage of their funding could have massively negative effects on public schools. President Trump justifies this mandate by stating that accommodations for transgender or nonbinary students and D.E.I. lessons violate both Title VI and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Essentially, the president is arguing that these lessons impede student’s equal rights. Veronyca West, a sophomore at McPherson College, agrees, specifically regarding Trump’s D.E.I. policy, “I don’t think that they’re necessarily needs to be a program for it… it could create some sort of like, I think they call it reverse racism. Where certain people are left out, and I think that they should just be inclusive overall instead of leaving anybody out.” On the other hand, Dr. Matthew Skillen, the Vice President of Academic Affairs at McPherson College explains that these types of lessons can benefit students. He said, “I can say those conversations [about D.E.I.] have always helped and they very rarely hurt an educational system or an educational experience.”
Political polarization can be found in many places today, and most educational institutions (including colleges) are unavoidably impacted. Colleges are home to students, staff and faculty members of a whole host of different backgrounds, and sometimes this can lead to contention. However, Dr. Skillen is hopeful. He shared, “What I gather is that our students are deeply engaged… reading extensively on what’s happening in the world around them and.. in my short time here we haven’t had any significant student protest, students usually find other ways to practice activism on campus.”
