Students Rally in the Wake of Trump’s Victory

Amherst community members gathered at a rally last Friday to share “anger and grief” over the reelection of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States.

After a small crowd had assembled on the First Year Quad, students engaged in chants deriding Trump as a “fascist,” bemoaned the possible “devastation [Trump] will bring for women, minorities, and working-class people in this country,” and criticized the Amherst administration’s decision to hold classes on the day following the election.

“We wanted to hold this rally because … we want to give people a space to share anger and grieve,” said Isabelle Anderson ’25, one of the rally’s organizers and co-chair of Amherst College Young Democratic Socialists. “My grief is real. Your grief is real, and we’re not alone. We will not let our college convince us today that things are normal.”

Student speakers throughout the rally expressed a sense of devastation at the results of the election. Some linked their feelings to a more profound outrage at the character of the nation.

“We are seeing this country’s ugliest self come to light — its legacy as a racist, sexist settler colony,” said Willow Delp ’26, another of the rally’s organizers (and a managing opinion editor at The Student). “It is Trump, but it is beyond Trump. It is the profound hatred of the other, deeply ingrained in American society centuries in the making. We stand together to say that this is unacceptable.”

This hatred, Delp said, has been demonstrated by the recent uptick in hate speech across the country, with online comments targeted at women proclaiming, “your body, my choice,” as well as a recent string of racist text messages sent to Black students stating they’ve been chosen to “pick cotton.”

The latter was addressed by the Office of Student Affairs in a school-wide email this past Monday, where they condemned the messages and highlighted resources for support on campus.

In addition to the rally’s organizers, members of La Causa and the Reproductive Justice Alliance (RJA) addressed the crowd, expressing defiance in the face of the Trump campaign’s rhetoric surrounding immigration and reproductive rights.

“Many members of La Causa are immigrants, children of immigrants, or have family members who are immigrants, and as such, we hold ourselves responsible to stand by and for them, for ourselves, in open defiance and challenge to the hateful rhetoric this community is subject to,” said La Causa Co-Chair Daniella Rosario ’26 in a statement.

RJA representative Gracie Rowland ’25 spoke about reproductive rights and encouraged attendees to get prepared, sharing a QR code that linked to online resources on where to find abortion pills like Plan C.

“Get [the pill], put it in your bag, and just have it in case someone needs it because we don't know what kind of times we’ll be entering,” Rowland said.

Organizers then invited attendees to share any feelings they had about the election results and the environment on campus since election night. August Selvaggio ’28, a transgender man, expressed his anger with someone who had recently told him that the election “didn’t matter at all” and we all just “go back to our lives.”

“I just decided that I needed a place to be angry right now,” Selvaggio said.

A number of students at the rally also expressed dismay at the college’s handling of the election, including the decision to hold classes on the day following the results.

“Like many of you, we’ve been very disappointed by the lack of response by the administration. Them sending an email the night before election night and saying, ‘Sorry you’re anxious. Here’s counseling center open hours,’ and then not saying anything the day after, when people were literally crying in class and in public, really sucked,” said Anderson.

Students also claimed the results of the election had left them so upset that attending classes felt inappropriate.

“I haven’t gone to class in two days because none of my professors talked about what was happening, and that was really upsetting,” Anderson added.

Some students who were attending the rally were in agreement that the college should have canceled classes yet affirmed that they still felt supported by other Amherst staff members and professors.

“I do think there could have been an effort … to potentially cancel classes,” said Freeman Rabb ’25. “But at the end of the day, there are staff members that have been exceptionally supportive, and I know a lot of professors have given people automatic extensions and have said, ‘Hey, this is a community [where] you can talk to people, and we can work together.’”

For Tyra Redwood ’25, sharing her thoughts in French class the day following the election left her feeling much better.

“Instead of saying, ‘Oh, it just happens,’ [my professor] sat in silence with us and asked how we were feeling about this. All of us just cried together [and] I think that was so appealing because after I left that class, I was like, ‘Okay, I got this,’” Redwood said.

Wade Boswell, the interfaith and humanist chaplain, and Crystal Norwood, associate dean of students, were also in attendance.

“I’m feeling the same grief that you are feeling, which is why I wanted to be here,” said Boswell in their brief statement, encouraging students to schedule a meeting with them if they have any strong feelings or concerns.

Throughout the rally, in between chants condemning Trump as “fascist, racist, and sexist,” students still called for hope. Many speakers urged those in attendance to become more involved in political action at Amherst.

“Keep joining the grassroots organizations. Keep getting involved, keep making it to events, keep posting, keep talking, keep doing whatever the hell you can do to say that this is not what we are going to accept,” Rowland said.

Some saw the rally itself as a sign of hope. To end their opening remarks, Delp read from a poem by Ada Limón entitled “The Leash.”

“Reader, I want to say, don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish comes back belly up, and the country plummets into a cremating crater of hatred, isn’t there still something singing?”

Delp had a reply. “Your presence here today proves that there is still something singing.”