UConn students and faculty protest Trump cutting research grants, revoking visas

University of Connecticut students and faculty rallied on the Storrs campus Thursday against funding cuts from the Trump administration.

They said cuts to grants will undermine researchers studying treatments for cancers, the impact of cellphones on children and other health-related concerns.

“Every single community member all across the country, we’re effective researchers who aren’t able to research cures for cancer anymore,” said Grace Easterly, president of UConn’s graduate and doctorate student union.

Protesters gathered outside the student union for roughly 45 minutes before heading inside for more comments from speakers.

“We are going to say to Donald Trump, ‘we won’t take it anymore,’” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said.

Earlier in the day, Blumenthal also joined Mayor Justin Elicker (D-New Haven) to voice support for international students who had their visas revoked.

“The make America great again lipstick is quickly being washed away to show the pig underneath,” Elicker said. “What America is doing right now, what Trump is doing is making America weak.”

NBC Connecticut

NBC Connecticut

Not all students were supportive of the protests Thursday.

Geoffrey Medeiros said the focus should be on colleges and universities that defied President Donald Trump, because voters elected him to push for changes.

Specifically, Medeiros was critical of UConn, and Connecticut officials generally, for continuing to push back against Trump on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

“We've seen time and time again that the American people have rejected these ideas, and the state continues to push them,” he said.

Medeiros, who is trying to revive UConn Republicans, also said Connecticut and other states should know they risk funding when they do so.

“We saw that the country overwhelmingly voted against it and I think if the state does not comply with the law, that’s on them,” he said.

But researchers like Adam McCready said the sudden loss of funding jeopardizes their research.

McCready, an assistant professor, was studying how cellphone usage impacts middle school-aged children when he received a letter in March that his grant funding was cut.

“To be completely caught off-guard effectively ends our study unless somehow we get funding in the immediate future, which doesn’t seem great at this time,” he said.

Others, like doctorate candidate Alexander Blagojevic, said the federal government has traditionally been the main funding source on key research.

Blagojevic is a cancer survived and said each medicine he took was developed from research entirely or partially funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“If were having this conversation 20 years ago, I might not be here,” he said.