UC Berkeley students stage walkout against Trump administration policies

BERKELEY, Calif. (KRON) — A student-led and organized walkout on UC Berkeley’s campus.

This all stems from the many hard crackdowns the Trump administration has unleashed — such as the end of DEI, termination of international student visas, and the attack on free speech.

It was a little quieter Sunday evening at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall. But earlier, student-led groups, like the Brown Issues Chapter and Frontera, held a walkout.

“Remaining silent is not an option anymore,” student Hulissa Aguilar said.

Student speakers like Aguilar spoke out against the Trump administration’s crackdowns.

“We stand here for universities like Harvard, which are refusing to comply with unlawful threats made by this administration,” Aguilar said. “We believe that no university should ever bow down without putting up a fight to protect its students first.”

Gabriel Mendoza, another UC Berkeley student speaker, spoke about the importance of Pell grants and student loan forgiveness programs and how they are now threatened because of the Trump administration.

“And as many of us know, including myself, we depend on those programs to help pay for those outrageous tuition fees,” Mendoza said.

He says it’s more than just budget cuts to DEI programs. There’s a deeper message behind this.

“They’re cutting the bridge that connects underserved communities to opportunity, to visibility, to belonging,” Mendoza said.

Student speaker Kimberly Lopez brought up the nationwide termination of international student visas.

Another student, Kimberly Lopez, brought up the nationwide termination of international students.

“Not only do these revocations affect international students at the universities of California, but the private universities and the community colleges,” Lopez said.

Student organizers of the walkout say they won’t stop speaking up and refuse to let the stories of marginalized people be rewritten by the Trump administration.