International Student Association (ISA) as a multicultural student organization on campus has been striving to promote cross-cultural communications between international students and the whole campus community. When international students from different countries arrive at the College, we are not only seeking U.S. education, but also trying to have a cultural experience and immersion. While international students interact with students from other cultural backgrounds, it is also important to have other students interact with us to promote intercultural communication. ISA as a group acts as a platform to build up a mutual learning community on cultural differences across the world. ISA has hosted many cultural events such as international food festival, South Asian Barbeque, a speaker event with Rosa A. Clemente and movie night featuring “My Name is Khan” over this past year. It has given international students opportunities to celebrate their traditional holidays together while away from home, cook their dishes from home countries, present movies on certain cultural issues to raise awareness and connect with domestic students by sharing their distinct cultural perspectives.
The College of Wooster has been recruiting a high population of international students despite the change in political climate on reduced enrollment across U.S. institutions over the past year, according to Forbes. This has built up a diverse college community where everyone can learn from different cultures to expand their lenses and perspectives without traveling. Cultural differences exist when international students arrive at a U.S. college, and their stories and cultures have always been underrepresented while being Wooster students. While studying at Wooster it has always been international students’ desires to share their cultural beliefs and traditions with our new home, so the whole College community can know about us at another level. There are also curiosities and questions from many domestic students and staff about international students and our unique experiences. ISA has set up a platform as representation to expose ourselves to the greater community.
Enrolling students is the first step, and the following step is to retain them and create a group that would help them present and share their cultures with the whole community. We not only host cultural events to promote cross-cultural communication, but also unite all the international students together to express concerns and issues to the campus community. With some general meetings, daily casual conversations with international students over the past year, we have learned about other international students’ concerns and struggles when adapting to a new academic year and mental well-being. This provides an avenue to share their feelings with peers, so their struggles can be understood.
We are striving for improving international representation on campus and improvement of our current situations. Uniting all the international students together is our main goal, so we can solve all the problems with more voices shared, and none of us is in solitude. From the effort over these past few years, our active involvement on campus has raised higher international awareness and more effective cross-cultural communication, which has also enriched students’ experience.
With the recent foundation of International Student Advisory Committee (ISAC), we have built up collaboration with ISAC as part of the committee to expand our support system and community involvement. We continue to represent international students on this committee and raise our questions and concerns on how to improve the condition of international students. We would also like to connect the international community with other groups to improve the campus together as a whole. Under collaborations with other student activity groups and various international student committees like International Student Services (ISS) and ISAC, we are striving to support international students and bridge the cross-cultural communication. This needs the effort of the whole community involvement instead of only having one party reaching to the community. With some differences and commonalities, we identify with certain groups, but the ultimate goal is to unite as a one Wooster community. ISA as a multicultural student association collaborates with various student groups to connect and present different cultures as a learning platform, while supporting international students’ student life in general.
Tongtong Wu, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at TWu21@wooster.edu.