Unionizing student workers at Clark University expected pushback from administrators. Just not like this.

Clark declined to recognize the union and denied workers’ request to bypass a typical election by reviewing authorization cards from potential members amid a 10-day student strike. Perhaps most noteworthy, attorneys for Clark also argued in a legal filing to the National Labor Relations Board that a federal ban on undergraduate unions in place until 2016 had been wrongly overturned, an aggressive position with the potential to upend student labor organizing across the country, should the NLRB agree.

A Clark spokesperson said last week the university ultimately will not challenge that nine-year-old decision, which emerged out of graduate assistant organizing at Columbia University in New York. But if Clark or any other school does push the matter, it could eliminate the right to unionize for student employees nationwide and dismantle unions that represent tens of thousands of student workers.

“I’m not surprised to see a little wind taken out of the sails of union efforts, given what is happening on a national basis,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor and civil rights attorney in Massachusetts. “These victories are fragile at the moment.”

That moment Liss-Riordan refers to is the second term of President Trump, who has quickly taken aim at labor protections and union-friendly policies enacted under his predecessor. That includes an overhaul of the NLRB, where Trump in January fired two of the five board members, leaving the board without a quorum to enact rulings or conduct investigations.

The legal challenge Clark raised would also forward a policy that Trump administration officials were pursuing near the end of his first term, barring student unions at private universities.

All of it creates an environment far more hostile to student unions than what existed just a few months ago, said Barry Eidlin, a McGill University professor who studies working class power. In Trump’s first term, union petitions declined by 22 percent. Biden, by contrast, oversaw the largest increase in unionization in almost five decades.

“Having Trump in office now basically bragging about firing strikers sends a message to employers that can stiffen their resolve against unions,” Eidlin said. “And nobody wanted to create a situation that would give a university the opportunity to overturn the Columbia decision on student workers.”

That was part of what organizers at Clark feared, enough that they withdrew their petition for a union election in the wake of the school’s filing invoking the Columbia ruling. Yet the fuse had already been lit. More than 200 students voted to walk off their jobs in a one-day strike that continued for more than a week until Sunday. City Councilors and Clark faculty have issued statements of support en masse.

But a union remains out of reach.

In an email to students last Wednesday, Clark dean of students Kamala Kiem said the Clark administration wants to chart a “shared path forward” without a union, and will put together a student employment advisory committee, worker survey, and report of actionable improvements.

“The University regards undergraduate students first and foremost as students,” not workers, Kiem wrote. “You are here at Clark above all to study and learn and pursue your academic interests.”

That notion rings hollow to Maddie Logan, a Clark graduate student and union organizer, who notes that schools like Clark benefit from student labor and should respect student employees as the workers they are.

“I don’t know why you would tend the grounds, throw out the trash, close up buildings, or do administrative tasks if it isn’t to pay your bills,” she said. “I don’t know how Clark views that as a role of the student.”

The dispute is also happening as many universities face growing financial issues. Demographic shifts are dampening enrollment projections. Cuts to federal funding mean that the stipends that pay many graduate workers are in danger. Hiring freezes are spreading fast, and experts say student workers in all facets of university life may be asked to do more with less.

Maile Marguleas, a Clark student with multiple campus jobs, said it is unclear now what the future holds for her colleagues who work in dorms and the admissions office. Student jobs at Clark pay around $15 an hour, the state minimum wage, and, she said, many workers do not have flexible work hours or feel comfortable voicing concerns. Marguleas herself was promoted at the Clark Community Thrift store last spring, only to find upon returning to campus in the fall that the position had been eliminated.

“I’m going to be gone in two months,” said Marguleas, a senior who graduates in May. “I’m not going to reap any of these benefits. Why I’m doing this is because I know the next generation of the future Clarkies deserve these rights.”

Clark professor Gustavo Oliveira is thinking about the future, too. The union contract for graduate students at Clark widely raised pay and expanded sick leave for PhD candidates in programs like geography — the department where Clark excels and Oliveira teaches. Protections that the contract secured make the small, private institution more attractive to applicants who are also weighing bigger-name schools, Oliveira said.

At Boston University, a months-long graduate worker unionization effort landed as much as a 60 percent bump for the lowest-paid PhD students. A University of Massachusetts Amherst union representative said their residential life union came out on top during the pandemic when it won free housing for all residential life workers in need and secured expanded safety protocols as students returned to dorms.

To Oliveira, those are reasons why Clark should view a student union as an opportunity, rather than a threat.

“If Clark wants to stand out in the marketplace of universities, it’s to the school’s advantage to take the union drive seriously,” he said.

Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_.