A group of mostly first-year students is mobilizing opposition to President Donald Trump’s administration while looking to build a first-year-friendly community for progressive students.

Students with Revs Rise Up, an unofficial student organization founded last semester by a group of nine first-years, said they have urged officials over roughly the past six months through protesting and petitioning to oppose Trump’s education compact offering funding in exchange for policy changes and cut ties with one of GW’s preferred car rental service, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which allegedly provides vehicles to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Members said Revs Rise Up fills a gap among progressive student organizations by emphasizing recruitment efforts and community-building activities for members and focusing their advocacy on how students want University officials to respond to Trump’s actions.

Molly Weber, a first-year studying political science, said she came up with the idea for an organization like Revs Rise Up because she was involved with environmental organizing in high school and wanted to continue advocacy work at GW. She said after founding the group, she chose to primarily target first-years through recruitment efforts, including tabling and social media direct messaging, because Trump will be president for the duration of their college experience and time in D.C. 

“I think we’re in a really unique moment in history right now,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion about where our country is headed.”

Revs Rise Up is a branch of Students Rise Up, a national movement that launched in November 2025 with walkouts and protests at schools nationwide opposing Trump — who Weber called authoritarian because of his deployment of the National Guard and ICE in the District and involvement in the Iran war — and urging students to engage in strikes and protests.

Weber said Revs Rise Up has successfully recruited mass numbers of students by directly messaging potential members on social media and having one-on-one conversations with students who attended their tabling event last month.

“I got into a lot of organizations on campus and found that there was kind of a missing spot, one that was really trying to attract freshmen and draw in the freshman base of students,” Weber said.

Weber said roughly 25 of Revs Rise Up’s 30 active members are first-years, and she wants to create a space for underclassmen like herself to gain leadership skills by heading an organization, which first-years can’t typically do because of the existing hierarchical structures in other student organizations. She said the group plans to expand their outreach beyond the first-year-centered model next academic year, as the current members become upperclassmen, while continuing to recruit the incoming first-year class.

Weber said Students Rise Up has three broad goals that guide their activism — to protect freedom and security, freedom of speech and affordability on campus — though the group’s GW branch is focusing on freedom and security through their campaign pressuring the University to disaffiliate from Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Weber said Revs Rise Up plans to launch an online petition on May 1, calling on GW to disaffiliate from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, whose parent company, Enterprise, has come under fire from local protesters in St. Louis and Minnesota in recent months for allegedly providing vehicles to ICE.

“That really ties into the security part of Students Rise Up, making sure that all students feel safe on campus and that we feel like our tuition is going towards companies that actually support us and aren’t supporting ICE,” Weber said.

Amaka Agwu, a first-year majoring in international affairs and a member of Revs Rise Up, said the organization attempts to build a sense of belonging by combining advocacy with activities like picnics and craft nights, while simultaneously sharing information about how to “combat authoritarianism.” She said the group seeks to build a community that wants to be together while seeing change enacted on campus.

“More so than just being part of an org, you want to feel part of a family, a friend group, and see the actions that you’re doing impact not only the people within that org but GW as a whole,” Agwu said.

Agwu said Revs Rise Up conducted a listening campaign in February where they asked students through tabling and a Google Form earlier this semester what issues on and off campus they were most concerned about, where students highlighted issues like climate change, the war in Gaza, rising tuition, GW’s sale of its Virginia Science and Technology Campus to Amazon Data Services early last month and ICE, prompting the organization’s anti-Enterprise campaign.

She said the group is part of a coalition of progressive student organizations, including Democracy Matters, Swing Left and GW American Civil Liberties Union, who helped plan last month’s “No Kings” protest where hundreds denounced ICE and Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

The group in November and December through a petition and teach-in called on the University to formally reject Trump’s education compact, which would require GW to change policies to adopt institutional neutrality, mandate applicants submit standardized test scores and ban consideration of race and gender in admissions. Agwu said Revs Rise Up delivered over 100 letters from students asking GW to reject the compact to University President Ellen Granberg’s office, though the group never heard back from officials.

Officials confirmed in October GW was not considering adopting the compact and said GW was not invited to comment on or adopt the compact, despite Trump inviting all universities to consider the compact.

“We’re trying to combine with other orgs and build a larger movement to also propel ourselves into a movement that the administration cannot ignore,” Agwu said.

Jack McConnel, a first-year majoring in creative writing and political science and a member of Revs Rise Up, said the group being made up primarily of first-years is beneficial because first-years are “passionate” about politics and have more free time than upperclassmen.

“I was like, I want to do something. I want to affect real, meaningful change at GW, make students’ lives better,” McConnel said. “And for me, I think it’s the best place to start, is Revs Rise Up.”

He said the group serves a “different utility” than other student organizations by protesting and petitioning to get the University to work for students, as opposed to “traditional” avenues of communication with administrators, like the Student Government Association.

McConnel said being an unofficial student organization puts Revs Rise Up in the “best” position to advocate for students because the group is not subject to the same regulations as student organizations, though he did not specify which policies might hinder their advocacy and said the group has not done anything to warrant being suspended.

“They shut down Revs Rise Up, we’ll show up again,” he said. “You can’t kill us. There’s not really a way to shut us down.”