Professors put halt to annual New York trip, concerns over Trump administration

The 2025 New York City trip has been cancelled, the second time since its inauguration in 2001. This year would have been the 25th anniversary. (Credit: Brad Cross)

Every year, as fall reading week approaches, fine arts and history students trade their notebooks and midterms for MetroCards and Broadway tickets. It’s not your typical fall road trip — it’s a 10-hour van ride filled with sing-alongs and When Harry Met Sally.

However, the annual New York trip will not take place this year due to concerns about crossing the U.S. border and rising tensions within the Trump administration. 

Since its inauguration in 2001, the trip has only been cancelled once, due to COVID-19.

Brad Cross, chair of the history department at STU, created the five-night travel study with Ilkay Silk, former director of Black Box Productions. Cross said they wanted to immerse both history and theatre students in New York City, surrounded by historic institutions and live theatre. 

He said that he had been having doubts about doing the trip since the end of February. 

“When the U.S. administration put forward executive orders that declared that they would recognize only two genders, that was a red flag. The second [was] the ramping up of domestic paramilitary forces like ICE and the National Guard,” he said. 

Cross said this year would have marked the 25th anniversary of the trip. 

Even though the trip took place last year, shortly after President Donald Trump won the elections, no radical changes had been implemented yet. 

“[It] made sense to me that going to the United States was not a safe activity anymore for anyone who's not a citizen,” said Cross. 

Cross believes New York City is the best city for the trip because of the different institutions and restaurants capable of accommodating groups of around 50 students.

In recent years, Cross realized that many students who had visited New York before had not experienced the city the way STU offers it.

“I take them on walking tours of old neighbourhoods and we've been to out-of-the-way theatres that aren't anywhere near Broadway …  I built up relationships with various institutions, the Historical Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and so on. I have some connections to curators and sometimes we get some …  personalized access,” he said. 

Although not officially sponsored by the university, the trip’s success has been a team effort among faculty such as Tania Breen, fine arts professor, and Jamie Gillies, coordinator of the department of journalism and communications. 

Breen said one of her favourite moments from the trip was walking through the streets of New York and watching students be passionate about the city and everything that it has to offer. 

“[The students will] come back at the end of the evening and show you pictures and how they waited outside and got someone's signature,” she said. “They go from a nervous student to an excited kind of globetrotter.”

While saddened about the final decision, Breen believed it was the right choice. 

“I don't feel good about bringing anybody across that border right now and I don't deem it as safe. It's very sad. And theatre has just recovered now, New York and any large theatre centre has just recovered now from the pandemic … but there's not much we can do.”

Both Breen and Cross hope to resume the experiential learning trip to New York City once it is safe for everyone. In the meantime, they’re looking for alternatives such as taking students to Halifax and Toronto. 

Martina Chaffey, a third-year philosophy and fine arts student, went on the trip last year in 2024 and described it as a “cool experience.”

“I learned so much on the trip. We got to tour an old theatre and so I got to learn about the history of theatre,” she said. “While we were there, I got to go to the American Museum of Natural History, which is one of my favourite museums in the world.”

Chaffey said she supported the decision not to go ahead with the trip. 

“I think that I kind of had an inkling that it would get cancelled just because of the situation everywhere … Tania sort of straight up told us, ‘We're not doing the New York trip this year. I'm not taking a group of students to the U.S. right now.’” 

Chaffey said that while some students were disappointed, none believed the decision to cancel was an overreaction.