When Donald Trump was elected president on November 9, 2016, students in The George Washington University’s College Democrats were shocked. There were tears streaming through face paint that read “I’m with her.”

It was a time when it seemed incredibly easy to “curl up on the couch and never leave the house again,” as democratic candidate Hillary Clinton described it at an event a week after her shocking loss. However, that is not what these students did. They woke up the next day, like college students across the country, ready to take action and fight for their future.

Political and social activism on college campuses has been on the rise for years. A study conducted in 2015 by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA states that activism on college campuses is at the highest level ever in the 50 years since the study began. The study cites climate change and hostile race relations as the main factors in this increase in activism.

Nearly 10 percent of the 142,000 students surveyed for the study said that there was “a very good chance” that they would participate in a protest during their time at university. This is a nearly three percent increase in the amount of students who said they would participate in protests in 2014.

This increase in activism is stemming from a string of successful protests across university campuses in the past few years.

Students at the University of Michigan rallied together to get the athletic director fired after he neglected to remove a football player who suffered a concussion from play.

Students at Bryn Mawr University came together to remove a confederate flag from the campus and spark another conversation about racism in the United States.

The George Washington University has been “The Most Politically Active School in the Country” by the Princeton Review for the past few years. Students at George Washington believe that this activism is a central part of the campus.

Sarah Zarsky, a sophomore at George Washington, said that while she is not that politically active she finds the protests, stand-ins and vigils to be “a central part of where we live and what we all came here to do. To try and make a difference.”

George Washington’s location, a few blocks from the White House, is a central piece to student’s desire to be politically and socially active. A week after the election of Donald Trump, hundreds of students participated in a protest and walked to the White House.

Shukri Dirie, a second year student at George Washington said that being in the District is what made that possible. “I have friends that go to other schools that do not care about politics or even bother to vote,” says Dirie, “I feel like this election was a big wake up call and I would not have wanted to be anywhere else and stand up for what I believe in.”

While George Washington has always been an “active” university, the new spike in activism is becoming prominent on other campuses as well. Alia Wong, an education writer for The Atlantic examines this rise in activism in her article ‘Student Activism is Making a Comeback.’ Wong interviews several experts to explain why activism is on the rise.

According to Angus Johnston, a professor who specializes in studying student activism at the City University of New York and one of Wong’s experts, more than 160 student protests took place in the fall of 2014. Johnston attributed the rise in student activism to the rise of instant media coverage, which puts the students and the protest itself in the spotlight.

The rise of social media allows students and other outlets to instantaneously broadcast their actions in the hopes of making a difference.

Samantha Corcoran, a sophomore at George Washington, has noticed that it is an all or nothing approach at the university.

“We thrive off of the idea that we are so close to what is going on,” says Corcoran, “There isn’t really a middle ground when it comes to displaying activism, especially on social media like Snapchat, students at GW are all in or all out.”

Wong laments that while college-age students can come across as ignorant towards political and social issues, especially when it comes to voting, because they believe that their vote does not matter, they see activism as the way to “make their voices heard.”

Students are fighting for their future. “The thing that ties this all together,” says Johnston “is a sense that the future doesn’t look as rosy as it might have a few years ago.”