Submission: UC should accommodate students affected by recent executive order
By Kathleen Tedi
Jan. 29, 2017 8:56 p.m.
On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.
The ban includes some international students who are already enrolled in American universities. Princeton University has sent emails advising students against leaving the United States while the implications of the ban are still unclear. A student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was not allowed to board a plane headed for the United States. She isn’t the only one. According to The New York Times, another student took to Twitter to voice his concerns of being unable to continue his studies at Yale, and a student at Stanford – a legal permanent resident of the United States – was also detained before he was allowed to fly to California.
In light of such continued uncertainty for international students, the University of California should consider expanding online forms of teaching to accommodate UC students similarly at risk.
For many international students from predominantly Muslim countries, the risk of deportation is very real. But in the face of federal enforcement, there is little they can do to continue their studies in the United States. Thus, it’s quite possible they could be forced to leave, having wasted years and thousands of dollars worth of tuition money, only to receive no diploma. That’s not even considering the stress international students could face by having to reapply to universities elsewhere and essentially restart their education.
The University and its professors can help at-risk undergraduate students avoid this scenario by recording the lectures for classes in which these students are enrolled and uploading the videos to Bruincast or a similar platform. Students can turn in classwork and papers online through CCLE and Turnitin, a practice already common among students living on campus. And collaboration between the UC and foreign universities can ensure students take midterms and finals in a fair environment at a host university close to where they are.
Since a large portion of the affected students are pursuing graduate study, faculty can also conduct discussions and seminars online via a video messaging service like Skype. Research may admittedly still be difficult without access to resources in the United States, but again, collaboration with foreign universities can help address that problem.
An online approach will be a pragmatic and even necessary measure to ensure the students do not lose too much out of the decisions that have been made.
While leaving the country to pursue an off-campus education certainly isn’t preferable for anyone involved, an online option would at least help lessen the burden for at-risk students and keep them on track to earn the degree they’ve already worked so hard and paid so much to obtain. It should be within the University’s ability to help account for the situation. This online alternative hopefully will not have to happen, but it can at least offer a way out.
Tedi is a first-year political science student. She is an international student from Indonesia.
