A commentary in Kansas State University’s student newspaper that criticized the presence of international students at the institution has roiled the campus—and generated concerns about how ready American students are for the growing number of foreigners coming to study in the United States.
The column, written by a sophomore journalism and communications major, labeled Chinese students as potential “enemies” and argued that they and other students from countries with foreign policies unfriendly to the United States should not be educated by public universities.
The article’s author and the newspaper’s editor have both issued public apologies. Chinese- and English-language social-media pages that sprang up about the incident have received hundreds of hits. And on Thursday night the university’s student-government association passed a resolution, criticizing the article and affirming the institution’s openness to foreign students.
More broadly, the controversy has raised questions about just how prepared American colleges are for the international undergraduates, particularly from China, who have flooded their campuses in recent years. The number of Chinese undergraduates at Kansas State has shot up from 265 just three years ago to about 720 today; nationally, the numbers have more than tripled in the same time.
While colleges have worked to help overseas students adjust to campus life, some educators worry that they have not done enough to prepare American students for their new classmates. If universities don’t act more aggressively, they worry, cultural clashes could flare up on other campuses. Already, parents and prospective students in Washington and California have expressed concerns that an influx of foreign students could squeeze them out. Last year, the chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles took to YouTube to condemn a racially charged video posted online by a student that criticized Asian and Asian-American students.
“It is not surprising to see an increase in tension and misunderstanding associated with significant increase in international student numbers—especially since this increase has happened over such a short period of time,” says Wesley R. Young, director of services for international students and scholars at the University of California at Davis, which has doubled its overseas enrollments in three years. “It’s organizational culture shock.”
At Kansas State, the controversy began last Friday when the paper, the Kansas State Collegian, published a piece by Sean Frye, a staff writer, who argued that the university should stop using taxpayer dollars to educate students from countries that do not have “good relations” with the United States, singling out Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. (In an e-mail message, Mr. Frye said he and another writer at the paper had been assigned to compose dueling columns on the issue after a hearing a speaker talk about foreign students and campus internationalization. The other column, which was supportive of international enrollments, received far less attention.)
The premise of Mr. Frye’s column was erroneous—international students at Kansas State pay more than two times the tuition of in-state students and, at the undergraduate level, few, if any, receive financial assistance from the university. In fact, overseas students help support the university, and others, especially in tough budget times. But what really rankled Kansas State’s Chinese students, who make up some 70 percent of international undergraduates, was his conclusion: Taxpayer money, Mr. Frye wrote, “should not be spent to educate students who could, in the near future, become the enemy.”
Xiyang Niu is a junior from Dalian, in northern China, and a co-president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Union at Kansas State. “When I saw the paper, I was angry, disappointed, and puzzled,” he says. “How could the Collegian publish something like that?” He and other Chinese students met over the weekend with their faculty adviser, Liang-Wu Cai, an associate professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, and drafted a letter calling for apologies from both Mr. Frye and the Collegian‘s editors, and for an investigation of how the article came to be published.
“There was an appalling lack of sensitivity by the editors,” says Mr. Cai, who calls the piece “hate speech.” “I worry about the impression it creates on the entire campus.”
The paper, which is self-supporting and independent of the university, published the students’ letter, along with others, all of which sharply criticized the column. On Wednesday, it ran a follow-up by Mr. Frye.
“I wish I had not used the word ‘enemy,’” he wrote, adding, “I realize that the language I used in the article insinuated that I believed that the students themselves were enemies. I adamantly do not believe that, and I apologize for the words in my column that implied that.”
On Thursday, Caroline Sweeney, editor in chief, weighed in, saying she was sorry for “shortcomings” in the editing process and promising a review.
While several of the dozen Chinese students who spoke to The Chronicle reported instances in which they felt subtle discrimination on campus, most called the university welcoming. “I told my mom that when I came here, the first thing I learned to do is to smile because everyone always smiles,” says Anzhi Chen, an accounting major from Fujian Province.
Xu Tan, a student-government member who drafted the resolution supporting international students, agreed. “The last week has not changed my opinion—I still love K-State.” He paused. “But not the Collegian.”
But Jing Han, a graduate student who created a Facebook page about the incident, says she now “doubts my impression. Do they really welcome us?”
Marcelo Sabatés, the university’s interim associate provost for international programs, says that although the article itself was hurtful, the on-campus discussion it generated has been healthy. Still, he says the university must do more to give all Kansas State students greater global exposure and understanding, something he notes is a priority of the institutional strategic plan.
Fanta Aw, director of international student and scholar services at American University, in Washington, says administrators can’t assume that “real engagement will happen by osmosis” when American and foreign students are brought together on the same campus. Her institution has offered courses in cross-cultural communications, worked to ensure a good mix of foreign and domestic students in its residence halls, and trained faculty and staff members to better serve a diverse population. “If colleges want to move from ‘us’ and ‘them’ to ‘we,’” says Ms. Aw, who is also assistant vice president of campus life, “the effort has to be holistic and deliberate.”
And that, she adds, can be tough to do, particularly if overseas enrollments grow markedly in a short period of time. “If colleges go from a few international students to double and triple the numbers, it’s hard to build the infrastructure fast enough—never mind change the campus mind-set and culture overnight.”
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