This week, several outstanding college students are not just learning, but putting into action an essential component of a complete, well-rounded, quality education — peaceful assembly and advocacy.

Students at West Liberty and Bethany, both whose student bodies are more than 50% international students, are organizing assemblies against the country’s unprecedented ongoing mass deportations.

The demonstrations are very well organized. WLU Students for Democracy are organizing the protest on West Liberty University’s campus. The Bethany rally is being held at Bethany Memorial Church. Leading up to the events, organizers reached out to and received training and support from the ACLU and experienced organizers in our community.

The students should be commended because actions such as these are a core component of a complete, well-rounded education. Student demonstrations show that what is learned in class — whether history, sociology, international relations, or what have you — is not separate, disconnected, and removed from us today and in real life. But rather, that we today are part of that history, that we make up our society, and that we relate to one another and our world. What’s more, they show that as recipients of an education, we have a responsibility, a duty, a civic obligation to use the material we learn in our classes; to make informed decisions, including to act — using our voices and presence along with others — for the betterment of our community. Indeed, as enshrined in our First Amendment, an educated populace, free and able to assemble, is a necessary cornerstone of our American Democracy.

As such, especially now, student demonstrations should be allowed, encouraged, and commended — not just by our community, but by our schools. It is the centuries-old, well-established norm that student demonstrations like these at West Liberty and Bethany are supported — not just by fellow students, but by professors, faculty members, alumni, and university leadership, up to and including university presidents. Agree or disagree with the positions students take on the issues, universities should have confidence in the quality of the education they are providing their students and demonstrate that confidence by trusting their students to arrive at and advocate for well-informed positions, worthy to be taken. After all, universities do not teach what to think, they teach their students, our future citizens, to think critically; and to take up the actions that critical thinking demands.

So, these exemplary students should be commended for their actions organizing demonstrations at West Liberty and Bethany this week.

Dave Cantrell of Wheeling is a Democratic candidate for the West Virginia House of Delegates. Vincent DeGeorge is president of the WALS Foundation.