AMHERST – The University of Massachusetts has placed a freeze on the registered student organization Sunrise Movement UMass Amherst after its members dropped a 40-foot-long banner reprimanding the university’s fiscal actions.
Several members of the local Sunrise Movement chapter, a political group advocating for climate action and social reform, released the banner on the Student Union Plaza at 10 a.m on Dec. 5 to promote a future protest scheduled for Feb. 2. Sunrise members told the Daily Collegian that the banner depicts UMass administration on pillars of profit stealing money from students.
Later that afternoon, the student organization received an email that stated that dropping the banner broke three aspects of the university’s registered student organization policy. In response, officials froze the chapter for the remainder of the semester and the spring term. According to a Sunrise Movement social media post, the violations state the banner did not follow poster guidelines, the event advertised an unregistered event and the organization’s advisor was not informed of the protest three days prior to the banner drop.
“Clearly, our administration is using whatever loopholes they can find in university policy to strike down and silence student dissent. They’ve never given us points for any of these things before,” the Instagram post reads, with “points” referring to strikes organizations receive for violating university policies.
Efforts to reach members of the group via social media were unsuccessful.
According to UMass spokesperson Emily Gest, all student organizations must comply with policies and expectations set by the Student Government Association as a requirement to access funding. Leaders of student organizations are informed and trained on these policies, she said.
“The Student Organization Resource Center (SORC) — an SGA agency that supports RSOs and oversees compliance — will follow up with Sunrise Movement UMass Amherst and SGA to discuss next steps,” Gest wrote.
The demonstration last month came after more than 94% of the Professional Staff Union and board of the University Staff Association voted no confidence in University of Massachusetts Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes. Staff represented on PSU have worked under the stipulations of a previous contract for around 550 days.
“When we pay to go to this school, we form a social contract,” the Sunrise Movement post reads. “They have broken their side of the contract.”
The group lists the bad-faith bargaining complaints the PSU filed with the Department of Labor Relations as one of the ways the college “broke” their trust.
The post also said the administration is “siphoning our money into their pockets,” which is a possible reference to a budgetary report sponsored by the Sunrise Movement. The document authored by Associate History Professor Kevin Young states that the university can save millions annually by capping administration position salaries at $200,000 and redistributing a third of the athletics’ department’s budget, among other recommendations.
The university officials offered a six-page rebuttal to points spelled out in Young’s report, noting that report circulated inaccurate or misleading data. “Across multiple areas, the report mischaracterizes investments in student and faculty support as detracting from academic spending rather than strengthening it,” the rebuttal states. In terms of administrative salaries in particular, the university says that UMass executive compensation is at or below the median compared with its 11-member peer group.
The Sunrise chapter in its social media post explaining the situation said the administration informed the group that it will unfreeze their status if the members write an academic paper on the reasoning behind the organization’s desire to protest. The students must also include a plan to continue student activities without breaking policy.
Sunrise members said their essay response will explain the university’s failure to uphold “their side of the contract” and how a protest within the institution’s guidelines “isn’t really protest at all.”
“At Sunrise, we use nonviolent, direct actions to show admin that if they break their side of the contract, we’ll break ours too,” the post said. “This spring, we’re only aiming higher. They’ll keep coming after us, but only because they’re afraid of what we can do when we work together.”
According to the Daily Collegian, the banner drop was part of the organization’s monthly day of action, which takes place on the first Friday of each month. Previously, the group organized a walk out on Nov. 7, 2025 where over 200 students marched to the Whitmore Administration Building and demanded Reyes reject President Donald Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.