The cold hit Ithaca hard this month. Record lows, the kind of freeze that makes your face hurt the second you step outside and shuts down universities, forcing you to stay inside whether you want to or not.
Meanwhile, other parts of the country stay warm, still sunny, going about their days like winter never came. It’s strange how that works, how a crisis can be all-consuming for some while others barely feel the chill.
It’s a Friday, and students are bundled against the cold, trying to focus on classwork, making weekend plans. The usual rhythms of college life. But underneath it all, there’s a different kind of freeze running through campus, one that’s hard to name but impossible to ignore.
Minneapolis. Tariffs. Deportations. Wars that won’t end. Climate disasters. Some people are buried in the daily avalanche of news that feels like too much and also somehow not enough. it, unable to escape the weight. Others, however, are trying to stay warm, protect themselves, and keep functioning. And some barely registered any of it at all. Different temperatures, same storm.
This isn’t a story about activists or organizers with perfect answers and polished statements — this is about everyone, those who scroll through headlines between classes, who don’t know what to say but feel like we should say something, the people carrying the weight of right now and trying to figure out what that even means.
when it hit.
The first reaction is always the hardest to describe; that moment when you see the headline and have to read it twice because… what? From all around the nation, students from Ithaca to New York City respond about their initial reaction. From Westchester, NY, Simona Fergoine felt it personally. “I mostly had a heavy feeling of heartbreak, disgust too. This country is made of immigrants, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for immigration. My grandparents on both sides [came] here from Italy. They made plenty of sacrifices they made to live a better life and provide for their families.” For Gen Z, tragedy doesn’t arrive on the evening news anymore. It arrives in notifications, via Instagram stories, groupchats that go silent and then explode. We’re living history in real time, watching it unfold between classes and dinner plans, and there’s something uniquely suffocating about it all. Elizabeth Adelman from New Jersey shares, “I was watching Alex Pretti’s murder. Before, videos would cut right before, so you heard it instead of seeing it. But this time, I saw and heard it all. I got nauseous, and I remember sitting in my room hunched over, trying to move on from seeing his body go still.” There’s pure frustration everywhere and across town at Fordham University, Samirali Masoud empathizes with those directly impacted, “Outrage only comes when that violence is directed against those who are not ‘supposed’ to be victims. Nonetheless, my heart aches for Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Keith Porter. If anything, this should tell us that we are in desperate need of unity above all else.” The pressure to respond immediately is real; post something, say something, prove you care. “I hate how normalized this violence is becoming,” Adelman states. “There would be mass shootings, and the media and general population would move on. Now, we have ICE kidnapping and killing people, and we are expected to go about our days. I’m scared that I am being complacent or will be. I want to fight because words aren’t working. It’s going to get worse, and I’m scared more people are going to die.”
The campus undercurrent.
If you walk through campus right now, you might not notice anything different on the surface. We’re still milling about our lives. But talk to the students, really talk to them, and there is something else happening underneath. Down in Manhattan, a New York University student puts it plainly: “Sometimes it leaves me feeling a little discouraged because what is being shown to me is not pleasant. It already costs an arm and a leg to barely get by, the job market is really awful, and then we have, as I would say, ‘evilness’ plaguing the earth — makes you wonder what is there to look forward to.” Some professors acknowledge what is happening, while others don’t mention anything at all, jumping straight into lecture while students sit there trying to reconcile derivatives with devastation. There’s a strange disconnect between the world inside the classroom and the world outside of it. In Ithaca, New York, a protest was held in the commons, calling for no work and no school, drawing a crowd. Some of my classes were cancelled while others were held. Sitting in a lecture hall talking about organic chemistry, stressing about the homework due, for your degree, your future profession, while in the back of your mind, you see students and community members holding signs, being present, doing something. Aya Oulida was one of them, “It is a wonderful feeling to be around people who are on the right side of humanity. I looked around the room and saw many familiar faces. A lot of the people at the ICE rally attend many of the events and rallies I organize for Palestine.” For some, it was the first time they’d ever shown up to something like that. But not everyone went. Not everyone could. And that’s part of the story too. “I knew that I had the opportunity to go, so I wanted to show up for the people who couldn’t,” says Adelman.
All The ways.
Here’s the thing about responding to tragedy: there’s no right way to do it. And yet there’s this unspoken hierarchy, a sense that some responses matter more than others, that protesting is more valuable than posting, that action is only legitimate if it’s visible. But the students navigating this moment are pushing back on that. In NYC, Masoud noticed the posting of “whistle codes,” proof of a societal change in response to ICE’s presence.,“while walking to work the other day in SoHo, I saw the posters with what to do when ICE is spotted, long continuous whistle, and what to do when an active arrest is occurring (rapid short whistles). Of the 3 or 4 whistles originally attached, only one was left. While it may seem small, it’s a reminder that we have not abandoned one another.” Shelby Heredia, a student at Macaulay Honors College at Lehman, has noticed institutions stepping up, too. “Seeing schools, community centers, and organizations in New York City publicly announce that they are safe spaces and ICE-free zones made me feel a sense of relief and protection, not just for myself but for my family and friends.” Going to a protest isn’t inherently more valuable than acts like these. Posting online isn’t less legitimate than donating when you don’t personally have the funds. We all do what we can, when we can, how we can. It’s just important to note that you can. In any way. If you’re looking for ways to stay involved, there are orgs like DoSomething, YVote, The Movement Hub, and many more places for young people who want to make an impact. One student frames it simply: “I think our role is to be vigilant and stay educated. On our rights and on the things going on in the state, country, and world.” Adelman echoes this, adding urgency: “As college students, we need to keep learning and have media literacy to know what is right and do what is right.” Meanwhile, Oulida keeps it direct: “engage locally.”But Masoud sees our roles as bearing witness: “the powers that be are not allowed to carry out this violence quietly. Bringing attention to the crimes against humanity we are witnessing can be an even more powerful weapon against those who seek to sweep these crimes under the rug.” The point isn’t ranking our responses, you take the legitimacy away. You don’t do something because you’ll lose followers, you do something because staying silent feels impossible, and your words matter. Like the Santa Clara Batman at their city council, calling out inaction on ICE at the Superbowl, show up in a way that makes sense to you because, believe it or not, your voice still matters. We’re still in a democracy, imperfect, messy, frustrating as it is, and that means something, whether it’s about our country or others.
What It Takes.
It’s easy to get caught up in how overwhelming everything feels. But that can’t be where the conversation stops. This generation came of age during crisis after crisis: school shootings, climate change, pandemic, police brutality, wars, and political chaos. We learned lockdown drills before we learned to drive and grew up with the understanding that the world is broken and we need to fix it– while also acing our exams, finding careers in the job market, and maintaining some semblance of mental health. “[Sometimes the] hardest part about watching all of this is feeling hopeless,” as an NYU student states. We get frustrated, never knowing what will happen next. “Sometimes [we] sit and wonder when the disruption is going to happen, when are people going to really get mad and start, maybe burning things. But then again, will anything really be done?” Another student, Masoud, states that “No one prepares the young activist for the moment when they truly realize that they cannot save everyone, and that the powers that be have always and will continue to abuse their power. I needed to sit with that feeling of failure buried deep within my chest, though logically I know there was nothing I could have done.” It’s a balancing act that no one really teaches you how to do. But we keep going, because what’s the alternative? From Ithaca College, to Cornell, Fordham, Lehman and colleges all around the country, we see a semblance of something. It’s “the future” says one NYU student, “There are more of us than there are of them” says an Ithaca College student, “The evidence that people care, we’re not a heartless society” says a Cornell student, “We refuse to be the generation that looked away” says a University of Michigan student, “Our anger is proof we haven’t given up” says a Boston University student.
The weight of right now is real. It’s heavy. But here’s what I keep coming back to: the fact that we’re carrying it together between the people doom scrolling at 2 am, at the protest, the people having hard conversations with their families, the donors; we’re all filling different shoes.
The weight is unimaginable, for the lost loved ones, for the families torn apart, for everyone caught in the crossfire of a world that’s crumbling. Their stories don’t end here, and neither does ours. Carry them forward.