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“I want to tell you why this compact is stupid and impossible to follow,” said Ben Armentrout, a member of ����’s Graduate and Professional Student Council representing the College of Optical Sciences, at a news conference Tuesday hosted by the Associated Students at the UA.

“It’s incredibly unclear on the consequences of signing, of not signing, but it is very clear on one thing — in this great, garbled piece of nonsense, we will have to return all federal money that year” if the university is found to have violated the deal. “That’s about half a billion dollars for the university,” Armentrout said at the news conference, attended by about 25 students, student leaders and community members.

Meanwhile, the county Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to oppose the higher education compact, with Supervisor Steve Christy, its lone Republican, voting against the resolution.

Supervisor Rex Scott, the board’s chair and a former long-time public educator, said the compact sent to the UA is “the introduction of authoritarianism into academia.”

“If you genuinely believe in academic freedom, as I’m sure the administration of the University of Arizona does, you don’t make deals that clearly don’t have the interests of academic freedom in mind,” Scott said. “This is an authoritarian-inclined administration and this is their attempt to force it into academia. I hope the University of Arizona will join MIT, which has already rejected this compact.”

The White House sent the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” and an accompanying letter to a first round of nine universities including the UA on Oct. 1, setting a Nov. 21 deadline to sign. Bloomberg News reported Monday that the compact has now been sent to .

The compact asks the schools’ leaders to agree to ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition for five years, cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%, change or abolish groups that criticize “conservative” ideologies, and ban university employees from speaking about any societal or political event unless it directly impacts the university, among many other requirements. In return, universities would receive priority access to federal funds, the proposal says. Those that don’t sign agree to forego federal benefits, the White House letter said.

‘Whole issue is nothing but hyperbole’

Christy, the supervisor who voted against the county board’s resolution Tuesday, sarcastically said he can imagine White House officials “just sitting on the edge of their seats, on pins and needles wondering, ‘what the result of this vote on this resolution is going to be?’”

“It’ll be earth-shattering,” he said. “You talk about hyperbole. This whole issue is nothing but hyperbole.”

Christy also employed sarcasm in calling the compact’s ask that universities ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, and to apply a strict definition of gender to campus bathrooms, locker rooms and women’s sports teams, “earth-shattering.”

“I would think my progressive friends to my left would jump at” the request to freeze tuition for five years, he added, referring to colleagues on the board.

“People have to realize that tuition keeps going up higher and higher and higher, and all we seem to be getting is an atmosphere that promotes one side of the picture and does not have any diversity of thought, which is the core foundation of a university,” Christy said.

He said the county should be urging the UA “to look for direction and guidance and help to work with” the Trump administration so federal funding doesn’t get cut off. “There is some compliance that they could find common ground (on) that would allow the programs to go on,” he said.

“I predict right now, if the university does not accept this compact with the administration, things are not going to end well as far as funding for the university, which is also another telling example of our own situation in Pima County. We need to rely less on federal funding, just like the university,” Christy said. “The University of Arizona, like Pima County, relies too much on the federal government for funding sources. We need both the university and we need Pima County to live within their economic means.”

‘Sword of Damocles’

The county board’s resolution opposing the compact is identical to the one the Tucson City Council unanimously passed last week, said Supervisor Jen Allen, who asked the board to vote on it.

The compact “would gut the mission of a land-grant university” such as the UA, Allen said, “with the explicit intentions to limit and control who gets admitted to the university, how they get admitted, the types of tests that they can take, the types of courses that could be taught, the types of things that professors can comment on, how we grade at the university.”

“If somebody is bullying you, you don’t stop them from bullying you by giving them what they want,” Allen said. She said there aren’t any guarantees “that more and more things would not be taken” if the university were to sign this contract.

Scott said that while the UA was able to “right the financial ship” under Garimella by eliminating its budget deficit, “that sword of Damocles that will hang over them if they reject this compact” might make signing all the more tempting.

“I hope they will resist that temptation and I hope the president and the Board of Regents recognize that if they sign this compact, they will also lose trust and credibility within the Tucson and Pima County community,” he said.

Supervisor Andrés Cano said the compact “is not about excellence, it’s about control.”

“The Trump administration is trying to force our university to follow a political agenda by tying funding to ideology. That’s not accountability, that’s coercion. It’s censorship in disguise,” he said. “You can’t claim to support free speech while punishing schools and students for what they teach. Conditioning funding on political conformity is government-sponsored censorship.

“Bottom-line, it is an anti-intellectual power grab that replaces education with indoctrination. America should fund ideas, not fear them,” Cano said.

‘Time to resist, to stand together’

At the ASUA news conference, Armentrout said the compact is “impossible” for many reasons, saying it asks universities to “obtain viewpoint diversity” by making their admissions “more restrictive,” and to ensure faculty members don’t “make statements on current events” unless they directly impact the institution, among other demands.

����’s Faculty Senate has also passed a resolution asking Garimella to reject the compact.

Joining the voices, the United Campus Workers Arizona, part of the national union, issued a statement Tuesday urging Garimella to reject the compact. Agreeing to the Trump administration’s “right-wing wishlist will give the federal government broad and vaguely defined powers over every aspect of campus life,” it says. The union said the compact takes a “concerningly hostile and dehumanizing stance towards international students and workers, whom the Trump administration views as a ‘national security risk.’”

The UCWA statement also points to the compact’s demand for universities to use “‘lawful force’ and ‘swift, serious, and consistent sanctions’ against those who take actions which ‘delay or disrupt class instruction,’” saying this would require universities to violently shut down a peaceful protest at the government’s will, or else risk losing federal funding.

Committing to these “alarming points — which uplift far-right viewpoints above all others, severely limit international student and worker access to our institutions, suppress student and employee speech, and target transgender campus members — would detrimentally change campus life at the University of Arizona and set a dangerous precedent for other higher education institutions,” said UCWA. “It is our time to resist, to stand together, and to reject this anti-democratic, anti-student, and anti-worker bribe.”

ASUA President Adriana Grijalva, who asked last week on that Garimella reject the compact, told the Star Tuesday she’s worried about the proposal as a first-generation Latina and a student using federal Pell Grant financial aid.

Grijalva said she’s been talking to a lot of international students, and the demand to cap their enrollment numbers is concerning. She also questioned what would happen to the teaching of race and history.

She said she signed onto a with the student body leaders of the other nine universities calling on the campuses to “reject political interference and federal overreach.”

Benjamin Huffman, AS����’s executive vice president, said the compact’s demands are “as vast as they are vague.”

“We are being tested on the price of our principles,” he said, adding, “Experts remain unclear as to the legal ability and binding nature of this proposed compact.”

Eddie Barron, an ASUA senator representing the university at large, said, “Our university should be taking directives from the people who make this campus, not Donald Trump, and not bend to political pressure rooted in fear and division. As students, we expect our administration to stand up for academic freedom and the truth, not to cave to political fear.”