A day before a Donald Trump campaign rally at the University of Illinois, Chicago, was abruptly canceled out of safety concerns about raucous protests, a college staffer warned the event would be "emotionally" "endangering" to students.
In a commentary posted Thursday night by
Progress Illinois, an outlet sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, UIC Graduate College staffer Maria Khan writes Trump was renting space at the university when "he has all of Chicago at his disposal."
"As a federally recognized Hispanic Serving Institution and Asian American Serving Institution, we express pride in our diverse student population, and welcome undocumented students and other non-US citizen populations as equal and deserving of an education and our respect," Khan wrote.
"The foundation and elements of this particular candidate's campaign are fully counter to this, and many of his supporters have expressed a violent distaste and hatred for the very backgrounds our students come from."
"While we are allowing him to exercise his right to free speech by renting out our space … are we endangering our own students both potentially physically but certainly emotionally, who up until this point have only had to read about his positions of hate online and watch it on TV?" she continued.
"Now they can see it live, on their own campus. We as an educational institution do not owe this individual anything, and we are not gatekeepers to his ability to exercise his right to free speech."
"Compounded with the nature of this candidate's crowds, and their record of treatment of ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups in our society, the choice to let this campaign use our space is troubling and distorts what UIC has professed to stand for," Khan wrote.