Our power does not lie in symbolic signatures: A student perspective on the AAC&U statement
On April 22, 2025, after less than 100 days after the introduction of a new federal administration, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) published an open letter that opposed “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”
The letter was quickly signed by hundreds of institutional leaders across the nation, accruing over 400 signatures in two days. Currently, as of Thursday, May 8, the number of signatures sits at 619.
As of the same time, President Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of Augustana University is not present amongst these signees. There are no South Dakota institutions on the list.
When this letter was released and began quickly gaining traction amongst American scholarly institutions a little over two weeks ago, I — a student, a journalist, a citizen — found myself curious. What did this letter say, and to whom was it directed? What did the statement seem to hope to accomplish? Most importantly, which factors might be playing into each institution’s decision to sign or not sign?
I pursued answers to my questions, meeting with educators and advisers for their input, asking peers for their opinions and doing my own research. Of course I expected this issue to be deeply complicated, but I was surprised to find that I struggled to form an opinion on the matter in light of the sheer scale of our national situation and number of relevant considerations.
Slowly, I realized that my hesitation to commit to any particular popular narrative in the discourse might be a lesson in itself. We — as students, educators, researchers, community members and leaders, and U.S. citizens — find ourselves in a delicate situation. In many ways, however, it is a historically familiar one: Political leaders have deemed higher education to be a threat to their goals before, thus attempting to threaten educational institutions first. And yet, colleges and universities remain standing across the country and world.
Scholarly institutions like ours persist because, day by day, they prove their value to the communities they exist within. The AAC&U statement speaks in part to this value:
“Colleges and universities are engines of opportunity and mobility, anchor institutions that contribute to economic and cultural vitality regionally and in our local communities. They foster creativity and innovation, provide human resources to meet the fast-changing demands of our dynamic workforce, and are themselves major employers. They nurture the scholarly pursuits that ensure America’s leadership in research, and many provide healthcare and other essential services. Most fundamentally, America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.”
This section of the statement, in my opinion, is the most important. It highlights the core of the issue: that institutions of higher education are an integral part of our society, a part which must remain healthy to continue serving communities around the nation.
But an open letter like this is ultimately a symbolic gesture. Even while it conveys many sentiments with which I agree, this kind of statement runs the risk of sowing further seeds of division without making any concrete move toward action, distracting us with ultimately unimportant arguments. There are a thousand and one debates we could have about any one single institutional leader’s decision and another possible thousand about the statement itself, phrase by phrase. We could raise our voices at each other and speculate about what a lack of signature says; we could disagree about the letter’s passing references to students, who remain fundamentally at the heart of this issue.
Still, as a student at a university that has not signed the letter, I believe that getting bogged down amidst these disputes is unproductive. Higher education continues to survive because institutions like ours continue to prove their worth. Here at Augustana, we are doing more than just surviving: enrollment numbers remain on the rise despite national downward trends, academic departments across campus see regular arrivals of new majors like neuroscience and criminal justice, and athletics like hockey and acrobatics and tumbling continue to develop their programs annually.
Augustana has already committed to its position on many of the issues that the AAC&U letter addresses. Our Policy on Freedom of Speech and Expression, current as of April 2024, says, “We celebrate our duty as educators to model the habits of responsible free inquiry, by ensuring that our campus and its classrooms are a place where individuals of good will can express and critically discuss a wide range of positions without fear of ostracism or retribution.”
Our current Student Handbook begins with a section entitled “Freedom to Teach and Learn” — it reads in part, “As members of the Augustana community, students are encouraged to develop the capacity for critical judgment and to engage in a sustained and independent search for truth. The freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of this academic freedom.”
With a federal administration in power that seems to value the quantity of their actions over the quality of them, this is a time in which it is imperative to give cautious thought to the actions that we can control — our own. We do not need to rise to the volume of the popular narrative or engage in discourse that does not lead to productive action.
We will continue to do what we know we can do and do well, as the five pillars of our Mission, Vision & Core Values lay out. Augustana already knows what it exists to do and strives to be, and I trust that if the next 1,280 days bring about a situation that calls for definitive action, our university will rise to the occasion like it has so many times before.
