More than 700 students at the University of Central Florida — Florida’s largest public university by enrollment — pledged to forgo class, work and spending money on campus Friday, students say, in support of a one-day “student strike” action organized by the university chapter of the national Sunrise Movement.
The action, held from noon to 4 p.m. Friday, was organized in coordination with a national Students Rise Up movement, which seeks to build the power of young people, snuff out authoritarianism, and unite communities by drawing on lessons of the U.S. labor movement.
At UCF, students are demanding that the university police department end a voluntary agreement it has with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement that allows UCF police officers to be deputized to take on certain federal immigration enforcement duties.
It’s one of at least 15 Florida public universities and colleges that have such agreements, known as 287(g)s, in place, even though they’re not required to have them under law. Students are also calling on the university to accept collective bargaining demands of the university’s faculty union, in a show of solidarity with their professors.
“The public sector can’t go on strike,” said Angie Orena, a 20-year-old political science student and Sunrise Movement coordinator, referring to a ban on public employee strikes under Florida law.
“Students want to go on strike on behalf of faculty, to prove that students care about what happens with our faculty,” she told Orlando Weekly, arguing that faculty’s living and working conditions affect their ability to help students succeed, too.
As university presidents receive garish raises pushing their salaries well into the high six or seven figures, Florida professors have been forced to navigate efforts by state leaders in recent years to undermine tenure, rid institutions of critical race theory, take on a conservative coup of higher education and attack their public sector unions.
The University of Central Florida provided its faculty union with a zero-percent pay raise proposal for the 2025-26 school year, according to the student-led Charge News, after gifting UCF president Alexander Cartwright a 33 percent raise.
“We believe we have power when working together,” Cameron Driggers, a student activist at UCF, told Orlando Weekly. Driggers, 21, is currently studying nonprofit management at UCF and is the founder of Youth Action Fund, one of the Gen Z-led groups involved in organizing Friday’s strike action.
“Students are obviously historically off at the forefront of the movement for social justice, and labor similarly has more power than really any institution in challenging the corporate interests that really dominate our country,” Driggers said. It’s “natural,” therefore, that the interests of student activism — including graduate assistant students who are unionized at some Florida campuses — would align with those of organized labor. The faculty union at UCF, the United Faculty of Florida, was not involved in organizing Friday’s student action.
Friday’s event was organized at UCF’s outdoor Memory Mall park, featuring tabling by organizations involved with organizing the strike action, including Students for a Democratic Society, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, PoderLatinX and People Power for Florida.
Students also organized art installations meant to enhance awareness of destruction and ongoing conflicts in Iran and Gaza — coupled with information about UCF’s partnerships with the U.S. defense manufacturing industry — and set up collection stations for food and clothing items to be added to the student-founded Knights Pantry.
“The strike is about, you know, educating students and about spreading awareness, but it’s also to show people that mutual aid and community are how we progress in society,” said Orena.
Another goal of the action Friday is to continue strengthening and building student engagement for an upcoming May Day action being organized nationally by labor and progressive groups for May 1 and a national general strike that unions like the United Auto Workers are building momentum for in May 2028.
Driggers said that, despite Florida’s reputation for being hostile to labor and anti-ICE organizing, his university has been a “hotbed” for this kind of progressive student activism. “It’s been very natural for young leaders there to take up the call and to begin organizing a non-cooperative action, or series of actions, on their campus,” he said.
University campuses, of course, have historically seen similar movements in the past of students organizing against costly wars and in support of social, economic and civil rights during the Civil Rights Era.
UCF did not respond to a request for comment on the student action Friday, and Orena said she had similarly received “radio silence” from the university. We will update the story if any comment from the university administration comes in.
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