By Tom Hausman
For The Diamondback
A group of about 20 students chanted and shouted across the University of Maryland campus Wednesday afternoon in an effort to rally against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Hosted by this university’s NAACP chapter, the Terps Against Trump rally took place after Republican candidate nominees Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced their campaign suspensions. The group hosted the event in response to the tweet that Trump’s senior advisor and director of social media Dan Scavino posted last month, thanking the Trump support and chalkings on campuses.
This university’s NAACP President Ceaira Thomas said the group wanted to speak out against Trump supporters on the campus.
“Everyone has seen the chalkings, and if you had to gauge it would seem that UMD is pro-Trump,” said Thomas, a senior economics major. “We know as active community members that this is not the case. It is a small group speaking on behalf of the whole community, and we find it utterly unacceptable.”
The group made their way from the Parren J. Mitchell building toward McKeldin Library and then toward the Administration Building. While walking, they played the song “FDT (F— Donald Trump)” by YG & Nipsey Hu$$le over the megaphone, and the group’s chanting echoed across McKeldin Mall.
“What does Trump support mean to me?” they chanted. “Hate and white supremacy.”
The marchers wanted to grab the attention of passersby, many of whom stopped and took videos of the protesters.
Senior Gabriella Davis, an individual studies major of Social Entrepreneurship in Latin America, helped make signs before the event and marched to the Administration Building with the group. Her sign read “UMD does NOT support Trump,” written in chalk on a black poster board.
Davis said Trump’s poll numbers are “ridiculous” and disagrees with his lack of solid plans for presidency and the push to “Make America Great Again!”
“Trump really just does not do anything but perpetuate hate, violence and racism,” Davis said. “I just do not support it. It’s important to make students aware of the problems within our society and … intolerance. We all know what Trump and his wall represents. It represents racism and a white America, and it’s anti-immigrant, which this country was built off of.”
A more national conversation about race and living in a post-Civil Rights Movement era has led to people being “uncomfortable,” Davis said, adding that people like Trump do not want to have that conversation.
Other schools, such as Towson University, have held similar rallies, Thomas said, pushing the narrative that students on their campus are not in support of Trump. Students at Towson, as well as this university’s NAACP chapter, are requesting that Trump-related writings and speech be banned from the campus as hate speech.
“The things that Trump says are so offensive to minorities and Americans in general,” Thomas said. “[It has reached] the point that even writing his name across our campus offends us.”
Trey Huff, a sophomore biochemistry major and the NAACP political activism chair, said because of the offensive nature of Trump’s beliefs and the reaction against them, he does not believe that some of the people doing the chalkings are actually in support of Trump.
“Somebody chalked ‘Trump’ on the side of the Parren J. Mitchell building, and we felt that was extremely disrespectful,” he said. “They never chalk it during the day when someone can see them. It’s not that they support Trump, it is because they are doing it to piss people off. It’s an insult.”
On the university campus and in Princes George’s County, where 43 percent of Republicans voted for Trump in last month’s primary, Huff said there are two different types of people who vote for Trump. There are the “really loud” supporters that you hear about in the news, rallying and causing trouble, and there are the “quiet Trump” supporters, who would never publicly admit their support, but cast their votes for the Republican front-runner.
