Students at the University of Georgia (UGA), the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT), and Georgia State University (GSU) have been arrested while staging a sit-in protest at each respective institution.
The protest was held in association with the organization Freedom University , “an Atlanta-based freedom school for undocumented students in Georgia”. Students involved are protesting the ban against undocumented students. Policies 4.1.6. and 4.3.4. of the Georgia Board of Regents deny undocumented students in-state tuition and acceptance into Georgia’s top five universities. The organization released a statement earlier today announcing that students from across the nation would be gathering at three locations in Georgia today:
On the 56th anniversary of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins, which took place on February 1, 1960 and ignited the youth-led movement for racial justice in the South, undocumented immigrant students and documented student allies representing 12 universities are staging classroom sit-ins at three Georgia public colleges that ban undocumented students from admission: the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology…Georgia is one of only three states – including Alabama and South Carolina – to institute an admissions ban against undocumented students in public higher education.
Announced via the organization’s Twitter account, 6 have been arrested at UGA, and police are on the scene at the GT and GSU campuses.
The statement writes that protesters include students from 7 institutions in Georgia: the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia College and State University, Kennesaw State University, Emory University, Spelman College, and Morehouse College. Students from 25 out-of-state institutions also participated, including Bard College, the College of Charleston, Smith College, and Harvard University.
According to the statement, integrated classrooms are identified by hand-painted monarch-butterfly wings, representing the migrant history of undocumented students.