Campus Alert Archive
UMass Amherst

"Out of an Abundance of Caution": UMass Amherst Tells 5,500 International Students to Be Back Before Inauguration Day

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Confirmed Threat

On November 19, 2024 — sixteen days after the presidential election and two months before Inauguration Day — UMass Amherst's Office of Global Affairs issued a winter-break travel advisory recommending that all international students, scholars, faculty, and staff under UMass immigration sponsorship return to the United States before President-elect Donald Trump's January 20, 2025 inauguration. The advisory explicitly noted it was "not a requirement or mandate" and "not based on any current U.S. government policy or recommendation," but cited the 2017 travel ban Trump enacted seven days into his first term as the rationale. UMass Amherst hosts more than 1,600 international undergraduates, 3,800 international graduate students, and 150 international scholars and staff from 120 countries.

Alerts
1
Response
—
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Public R1 · MA
~32,000 studentsUMass Office of Global Affairs (ISSS) Travel Advisory
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

1 message in sequence · 1 verified verbatim

INITIAL ALERTEmail
Verified verbatimAmherst Indy (Nov. 22, 2024) published the full verbatim text of the Office of Global Affairs advisory; confirmed also by HuffPost, New England Public Media, and Universal Hub all quoting the same key phrases ('formerly the International Programs Office,' 'out of an abundance of caution,' 'not a requirement or mandate')1104 chars
The Office of Global Affairs (formerly the International Programs Office) recommends that our UMass Amherst international community-- including all international students, scholars, faculty and staff under UMass immigration sponsorship-- strongly consider returning to the United States prior to the presidential inauguration day of January 20, 2025 if they are planning on traveling internationally during the winter holiday break. The Office of Global Affairs is making this advisory out of an abundance of caution to hopefully prevent any possible travel disruption to members of our international community, given that a new presidential administration can enact new policies on their first day in office (January 20), and based on previous experience with travel bans that were enacted in the first Trump Administration in 2017. This is not a requirement or mandate from UMass, nor is it based on any current U.S. government policy or recommendation. Undergraduate international students who live on campus are permitted to move back in early if needed. Please contact our office with any questions.
Verbatim text confirmed by the Amherst Indy (Nov. 22, 2024) which published the full advisory; the opening 'formerly the International Programs Office' and the double-dash construction are distinctive markers preserved in the source
The advisory was issued through routine ISSS/Office of Global Affairs email channels rather than the UMass Amherst Emergency Alert system, reflecting the advisory's informational rather than emergency classification — a deliberate channel-separation choice that preserves the credibility of the emergency channel
The phrase 'out of an abundance of caution' is the policy's defining design choice: UMass Amherst is making a recommendation about a hypothetical future executive order, not responding to a current policy, and the wording explicitly disclaims that it is 'based on any current U.S. government policy or recommendation'
Inclusion of the offer to allow undergraduates to move back to campus housing early is unusual for a travel advisory and indicates UMass anticipated some international students would shorten their winter break to comply
Context

Background

On November 19, 2024 — just over two weeks after Donald Trump's reelection on November 5 — the University of Massachusetts Amherst Office of Global Affairs issued a winter-break travel advisory urging the campus's international community to return to the United States before the January 20, 2025 presidential inauguration. The rationale was historical: on the seventh day of Trump's first term in 2017, he signed Executive Order 13769 ("Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States"), the so-called Muslim ban, which without warning barred entry of nationals from seven majority-Muslim countries and stranded students and faculty mid-flight. The 2024 UMass advisory is widely credited as the first such advisory issued by a major U.S. R1 institution; within four weeks it was echoed by Cornell, MIT, USC, Penn, Brown, Yale, Wesleyan, and others. UMass Amherst hosts roughly 5,550 international community members from 120 countries through its Office of Global Affairs / International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) office. The advisory's careful framing — 'not a requirement or mandate,' 'out of an abundance of caution,' 'not based on any current U.S. government policy' — became a template for the wave of subsequent advisories. The cautious framing was vindicated when, on January 27, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14161 directing agencies to identify countries warranting full or partial entry suspensions, leading to the June 2025 proclamation restricting entry of nationals from 19 countries. UMass Amherst's advisory illustrates an underappreciated category of campus communication: the prospective, hypothetical, hedged advisory issued in anticipation of a policy change rather than in response to a current emergency.
Analysis

Key Findings

UMass Amherst's November 19, 2024 advisory was the first of its kind from a major U.S. R1 institution and became the template for at least nine peer institutions in the following four weeks, illustrating how a single university's communication can cascade across the sector
The advisory deliberately disclaimed any current policy basis — using phrases like 'not a requirement or mandate' and 'not based on any current U.S. government policy' — to manage legal and reputational risk while still warning students. This hedging language has become standard in subsequent prospective immigration advisories
The routing of this advisory through ISSS email rather than UMass Amherst Emergency Alert reflects a deliberate institutional design choice to keep prospective policy advisories out of the urgent-threat SMS channel, preserving emergency-channel credibility
The 2017 Trump travel ban executive order (EO 13769), signed seven days into the first term, is the implicit threat model justifying the advisory — by 2024, university international offices had institutionalized contingency planning around the possibility that a new administration might repeat this pattern
Outcome
The advisory was widely covered by national media and was followed by similar advisories from at least nine peer institutions (Cornell, MIT, USC, Penn, Brown, Yale, Wesleyan, UMass Boston, and others). On January 27, 2025 — one week after inauguration — Trump signed Executive Order 14161 ("Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists"), which laid the policy groundwork for the country-specific travel restrictions that began taking effect in June 2025. UMass Amherst's pre-inauguration advisory is now cited as the first major U.S. R1 institution to issue this category of warning.
Provenance

Sources

  1. News
    UMass Warns International Students To Return To U.S. Before Trump's Inauguration (HuffPost)
    huffpost.com
  2. News
    UMass Advises International Students to Return to U.S. Before Inauguration (Amherst Indy)
    amherstindy.org
  3. News
    UMass issues holiday travel advisory ahead of Trump inauguration (Western Mass News)
    westernmassnews.com
  4. News
    Colleges advising international students and staff, return to U.S. before inauguration (New England Public Media)
    nepm.org
  5. News
    UMass Amherst to international students: Return to US before Trump inauguration (Union Leader)
    unionleader.com
  6. Official
    International Student and Scholar Services (UMass Amherst Office of Global Affairs official page)
    umass.edu
Tags
travel-advisoryimmigration-advisoryinternational-studentsf-1j-1h-1btrump-inaugurationwinter-breakmassachusettspublic-r1isssoffice-of-global-affairspre-inauguration
Added May 2026Updated June 2026Via ingestion