International neglect

Imagine you are a student from a foreign country of humble means. You have worked your hardest in school despite your circumstances, and the time to apply to a university, if ever, is now. Due to a lack of quality colleges in your country, you look abroad and set your sights on what claims to be one of the most globally focused universities in the world: Columbia. It promises to meet your demonstrated financial need and thus will pay for the exorbitant tuition and boarding costs that you will incur. Thrilled, you continue to look at Columbia, thinking its apparent desire for international students of every background will be manifested in other ways. But as you do more research, your thrill turns to discouragement as you find that though this university seems enthusiastic in welcoming you with financial aid, its care stops there. Once you arrive on campus (at your own expense), the hospitably named International Students and Scholars Office will limit itself to ensuring your papers are in order—nothing further.

As for adjusting to this new culture, you’re on your own. Want more community than what your first-year RA can cobble together in the first month? That’s up to you. When an extended break comes along, get ready, because if you don’t have the expendable income to fly back home at whim, you will be stuck in NYC with nobody to live with and no Columbia resources to help you find housing. From day one at Columbia, you will be on your own in this big city, with only an encouraging “Good luck!” from the administrators whom you would assume could help you.

Believe it or not, this is the situation that international students of modest means face. Columbia, unlike other schools with international students, does next to nothing to help students from overseas have the foundation for successful and enjoyable community life during their stay here. Whereas at other schools a student coming from another continent may be offered a host family program or financial aid for getting to and from home, Columbia merely concerns itself with basic financial aid and immigration papers.

Two key problems result from this situation. First, international students who are already at this school feel even more abandoned by their university than the domestic students do. They are left to fend for themselves in New York and at Columbia in a way as unassisted as the Ellis Island immigrants of old. While this may work fine for the parts of the year during which school is in session, breaks introduce them to their constant predicament. It costs too much to fly home, so they must either have bonded enough with someone so they can stay with their family for the holidays—or much more likely, they must find employment somehow or else they can literally find themselves without housing of any sort for a summer. Is this how we want to be treating our students?

The second issue that this problem creates is one that should motivate our diversity-obsessed administration into action. If the stated goal of offering any deserving student the opportunity to study at Columbia finds expression only in the confines of financial aid, then the goal is useless. If going to Columbia as an economically disadvantaged international student requires utter alienation and hardship in every area outside academics, then why would anyone come here? What results from such an uneven policy is a student community that has international students, yes, but only international students who have the means to fly home as they please. How does that at all reflect Columbia’s mission? How does that offer opportunity to the millions of students around the world who have no hope of paying for plane tickets but who desire and have earned the education that we receive?

This problem is not hard to fix. One of the most effective solutions that would require little to no money from the administration is a sort of host family program. With a system like that, families of Columbia students could offer to host international students during holidays and breaks or just be there for a home cooked meal every once in a while. Columbia doesn’t necessarily need to start subsidizing plane tickets for international students. By providing something like a host family program, Columbia would solve the biggest problems international students face when they find themselves far from home for four consecutive years without any contact or community on this side of the sea.

The payoff for Columbia and our student community would be great. Imagine the educational value of having students from the slums of Bangladesh, nomadic communities in Namibia, or an agricultural family in the Andes. With a program as simple as this, the Columbia education we all receive would be made available to any able mind in the world.

Derek Turner is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in Anthropology and Political Science. Opening Remarks runs alternate Thursdays.