A message from President Helen Drinan
A few days ago, Simmons University, together with 165 colleges and universities, joined an amicus brief in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. We joined this “friend of the court” brief to demonstrate our strong support for immigrant students and for DACA.
Since DACA was enacted in 2012, it has provided nearly 700,000 young people who came to the United States as children with the ability to work and go to school here without fear of deportation. DACA recipients, the “Dreamers,” are American in every way; they built their lives here, and they enrich our nation’s campuses, communities, and economy every day.
Here at Simmons we have been steadfast supporters of DACA and of Dreamers, some of whom have earned degrees at Simmons. When the administration announced they were terminating the DACA program in September 2017, Simmons was one of more than 400 institutions of higher education to sign a community letter to Congress urging them to permanently protect Dreamers. As Provost Conboy remarked in her Convocation Address that year, “Our founder dreamed of giving educational access to women because he understood it to be a matter of justice. As we face new questions of justice in our world today—with the decision to end the DACA program—I know that John Simmons would want us to stand with diversity, inclusion, and equity.”
Simmons University is proud to support DACA recipients, and we stand firm in protecting this vulnerable population when their futures are in question.