Why Did 150 Notre Dame Students Walkout During Mike Pence Commencement Speech?

As Vice President Mike Pence took the stage at Indiana's University of Notre Dame to deliver the commencement speech Sunday, about 150 students silently got up from their seats and staged a walkout.

The commencement speech was originally supposed to be delivered by President Donald Trump, making him the seventh POTUS (president of the United States) to do so in the history of the university. However, more than 1,700 students of the university signed a petition and urged the chancellor to not invite Trump to speak at the ceremony, Time reported.

The protest was a planned one. “We StaND For,”a student group at the university, said in a statement May 21 it was planning to stage a walkout during the commencement exercises.

“The participation and degree conferring of Pence, stand as an endorsement of policies and actions which directly contradict Catholic social teachings and values, and target vulnerable members of the University’s community,” Xitlaly Estrada, an undergraduate of the university said.

Among policies supported by Pence in the past, and condemned by Notre Dame protesters, are the marginalization of civil rights of LGBTQ community, rejection of Syrian refugee resettlement program and the banning of religious minorities, including Trump’s infamous travel restrictions on six Muslim majority countries, and ruling against setting up “sanctuary cities.”

Dozens of students also took to the streets of the campus, holding up signs to persuade Pence to alter his approach on issues like immigration, abortion, gun control and gay rights, the Telegraph reported.

Cassandra Dimaro, a student protester, chose to walk out with her peers from her own graduation ceremony in order to show solidarity "for those of us impacted by the policies of Trump administration as well as the rhetoric Trump administration has used."

She held a bouquet of flowers in her hand with her rainbow-colored graduation cap displaying the message: “Here, queer, get over it.”

Dimaro’s parents too walked out with her. “We need to show the world that there has to be tolerance, and we need to be more inclusive and wrap our arms around one another, even if we have different beliefs. I’m standing with my chest puffed out right now for what she (Cassandra) did," her father told the South Bend Tribune.

Pence appeared not to take notice of the ongoing protest as grabbed the microphone to deliver his speech. Instead, he praised the values and teachings of the university which urges its students to engage in free speech and expression.

“This university [Notre Dame] is a vanguard of the freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas at a time, sadly, when free speech and civility are waning on campuses across America,” he said.

This was the second anti-Trump protest by college graduates that took place this month. On May 10, a group of students at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black college in Daytona Beach, Florida, chose to turn their backs and drown the commencement speech delivered by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, in a stream of “boos” and hisses, the Atlantic reported.