As students at Harvard University called upon their institution to fight back against attacks on international students and federal funding cuts from the Trump administration, students at other Massachusetts institutions began preparing for the possibility that their university could be next.

In a first for Massachusetts since President Donald Trump took office, students across the state are coming together to build a coalition to push their universities to fight the Trump administration and to demand greater student involvement in decision-making processes.

A student-focused rally will be happening on Saturday at 2 p.m. in Back Bay Fens.

It has been organized by students at Boston College, Tufts University, Emmanuel College, Brandeis University, Boston University, Harvard University, Wellesley College, the University of Massachusetts Boston, Northeastern University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Emerson College.

The students are also working with graduate student unions, teachers’ unions and labor leaders across the city to get as many people to show up to the rally as possible.

“This rally follows the work we did for No Kings a couple of months ago, where we partnered with Massachusetts Indivisible to help turn out as many students as possible to just show up at the rally because we think that there are not enough students out here protesting and just showing their voices publicly,” said Jack Masliah, an international student from Mexico attending Northeastern University.

He is the co-founder and director of outreach for the Educational Freedom Project, a student group born out of Northeastern University that is fighting government attacks on higher education and asking for a seat at the table with university administrators. They have been leading the coalition organizing.

The group recently released a report based on a survey of over 1,000 Northeastern students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni and organized a town hall and a policy solution workshop.

“It was very clear that students do not feel involved at all in the decision-making process of a university. They agree with Northeastern’s core values, but they by and large agree that they are not standing up for that,” Masliah said.

The group crafted legislation to pass through the student government to try to address some of these issues and has been working with other student organizers across the state to push their universities to listen to and protect students.

He said the federal attacks on higher education, such as visa revocations at Northeastern, were the “fuel under our feet for a lot of this organizing.”

“We always talk about statistics of the number of research funding that has been cut, the number of international students that are being deported. But these are people, and these are our friends, and these are the people that we’re with in classes every single day. So for a lot of us, we’re starting to feel that very personally, and it’s kind of pushing us to act,” Masliah said.

He said cross-campus student organizing is still in its beginning stages and will continue to build. Ultimately, they are “stronger as a coalition,” Masliah said.

“We’re all experiencing this at a moment where the futures that we all thought that we had are disappearing because of these attacks and because of the universities failing to stand up on behalf of the students. And that’s bringing us all together in a way that I at least hadn’t seen before, which is very exciting and gives me hope for the future,” he said.

Student activism at Boston College operates largely in isolation from other college campuses, said Julie Huynh, a senior at Boston College. She wants that to change.

She has noticed that more students are afraid of speaking out or are apolitical or apathetic to attacks on higher education.

She hopes that the rally will be an important way of getting more students involved at different colleges.

“I think solidarity nowadays is more important than anything. There’s obviously strength in numbers,” said Huynh, who is the editor in chief of the college’s progressive newspaper, The Gavel.

The rally will also be a way for writers at The Gavel to be involved in activism who “want to do more than just writing,” she said.

When Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts doctoral student, was detained by ICE in Somerville in March, the effects rippled across the campus, even for those not present that day, like now first-year student Eliot Wertheimer.

Months later, the video of Öztürk being arrested by immigration officials in plainclothes and in masks has heightened the campus’s awareness of the potential for immigration officials to be near or on campus, he said.

Students are more suspicious of unmarked vehicles on campus or people who might be a security guard without identification visible, said Wertheimer, who is the vice chair of communications for Voters of Tomorrow Boston, a youth-led advocacy organization.

Öztürk was released from an immigration detention center in Louisiana and returned to Boston in May.

Federal government actions are affecting all of higher education, not just one campus, he said.

“We’re more powerful together than alone,” Wertheimer said.

He said more work will need to be done to expand the coalition and to organize after the Saturday rally.

“We don’t want institutions to give up their power like Congress has. Higher education has an incredible impact across the country. It’s a huge part of our education and a huge part of our society, and they have power. And we’ve seen the damage that can come when Congress gives up its power. And I frankly don’t think we can afford to see another powerful institution do the same,” Wertheimer said.