The University of Maryland senate on Thursday voted to join an alliance of Big Ten colleges who’ve agreed to protect one another against potential attacks from the Trump administration.

The only problem? They don’t actually have the power to do so.

Instead, the group of Maryland faculty, students and administrators, elected by their peers, will send their resolution to university President Darryll Pines. It’s up to Pines and the university’s legal team to decide next steps.

The move comes after steadily increasing pressure on higher education institutions since President Donald Trump took office in January. The Trump administration has threatened the funding of dozens of universities, revoked visas for more than 1,000 international students studying at American colleges and promised to overhaul the higher education accreditation system.

“We are standing up for academic freedom, institutional integrity and important research,” said Kim Coles, a faculty senator and English professor at Maryland. “Our only option, I think, is to lock arms and stand together.”

A university spokesperson declined to comment.

The alliance, called a mutual defense compact, has nine Big Ten institutions so far. First proposed by the Rutgers University faculty senate less than a month ago, the compact now includes the Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, Indiana University, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and the University of Washington.

Similar to NATO, the agreement would allow institutions to share attorneys and pool financial resources in the event that a member is targeted by the Trump administration.

Last month, nine universities in the Big Ten received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights warning of “potential enforcement actions” if the schools did not work to address issues of antisemitism on their campuses. The University of Maryland was not among them.

So far, only the shared governance bodies — usually faculty senates — at some Big Ten universities have voted in favor of the defense compact. No college presidents have committed to the alliance, though some, including Pines, signed a letter to “oppose undue government intrusion” on college campuses.

“The price of abridging and defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society,” the letter, signed by over 200 college presidents, reads in part.

Still, some faculty senators weren’t sure that the university president would join the alliance.

But Coles is optimistic.

“It is significant that we feel sufficiently imperiled to create such a coalition in the faculty senate,” Coles said. “I hope that President Pines will follow our advice.”

The 93-17 vote to join the compact passed in record time, said Ivy Lyons, a senator representing graduate students.

“A lot of us looked at each other and realized we needed to break the mold and act quickly,” they said. “We moved faster than I’ve ever seen us move.”

Not all faculty senators were so eager.

“Maryland is in a budget crisis,” said Nick Seybert, a senator representing the business school who wasn’t keen on investing the university’s limited funds elsewhere.

Seybert said that he opposed the Trump administration’s actions against universities but feared the compact would draw attention to Maryland.

“I don’t think we should be poking the bear,” he said. “I don’t think now is the right time to be making political statements that could be contrary to the position of the Department of Education.”

But Jeffrey Herf, a professor emeritus at the university, said the College Park campus is too close to Washington to escape notice: “The University of Maryland does not have the luxury of hiding.”

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