Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was met with protests Wednesday while giving a commencement speech at a historically black college in Daytona Beach, Fla.
Students and faculty at Bethune-Cookman University loudly booed DeVos when she was presented with an honorary doctorate degree before she began her address.
In response, faculty on the stage stood and applauded to show their support for DeVos.
“As I said, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be with you today,” she said. “While we will undoubtedly disagree at times, I hope we can do so respectfully. Let’s chose to hear one another out.”
{mosads}But the boos and jeers continued throughout her speech. University President Edison Jackson stopped DeVos in the beginning to try to settle the crowd.
“If this behavior continues, your degrees will be mailed to you,” he said. “Chose which way you want to go. Graduates-to-be, would you please be seated?”
Jackson ultimately let DeVos continue even though the protests persisted.
The protests come as DeVos and President Trump are under fire for potential changes to a federal program that helps historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to finance construction on their campuses.
DeVos said she was at Bethune to reaffirm the Trump administration’s commitment to support historically black colleges and the students they serve. She said the administration is committed to restoring year-round Pell Grants to allow students to further their education without taking on additional debt.
“I am at the table fighting on your behalf and on behalf of all students across this great nation,” she said.
“Anytime we meet someone new, we have two options: We can focus on differences that might divide us, or we can choose to listen, to be receptive and to learn from others’ experiences and perspectives,” she said.
The crowd erupted in angry boos when DeVos said she would visit the home and gravesite of the school’s founder Mary McLeod Bethune later Wednesday.
“Dr. Bethune believed students — you — had an unlimited potential to affect positive change, and with good reason. She’d done it herself,” DeVos said.
“As you leave, each of you will be called to embody courage in different ways and to rise to different challenges. The way you answer those calls will determine not just the future of you and your homes, but of your communities, this great nation and your world.”
Omarosa Manigault, the former reality TV star-turned White House adviser to Trump, was also in attendance. Students booed when the university’s president recognized her as a distinguished guest.
“Ladies and gentleman, please,” Jackson said, trying to silence the crowd. “You don’t know her nor do you know her story.”
The NAACP Florida State Conference called on Jackson and University Board Chairman Joe Petrock to resign this week amid allegations that the school threatened to punish faculty and students who protested DeVos.
NAACP said multiple allegations surfaced that the school was threatening to terminate faculty and withhold student degrees.
“With the recent comments of President Trump suggesting federal funding for HBCU’s is unconstitutional; this validates our view of a horrible decision by the university inviting Secretary DeVos, who still has not pledged to drastically increase funding for all historically black colleges and universities,” Adora Obi Nweze, president of NAACP Florida State Conference and member of the National Board of Directors, said in a statement Monday.
“The university leadership has drastically fumbled and should resign.”
Trump noted last week that the future of the federal financing program is subject to his constitutional authority.
In a statement he issued in signing the $1 trillion government spending bill last week, Trump said he would treat the program “in a manner consistent with the requirement to afford equal protection of the laws under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.”
In a statement Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) promised to keep fighting to expand black students’ access to higher education and ensure equity in K-12 education for communities of color despite what the Trump administration does.
“Despite the Trump administration’s alternative history claims, HBCUs are not ‘pioneers’ of school choice, but rather one of the many shining examples of what black Americans have accomplished in the face of centuries of discrimination in public policy,” DNC spokesman Michael Tyler said.
“Sadly, this administration continues this awful legacy of discrimination by questioning the constitutionality of financing HBCUs, stripping away funding aimed at combatting school segregation, and weakening protections for student loan borrowers.”