Every day when I work in admissions interviewing prospective domestic and international students, I tell them about how our campus is very diverse in comparison to other liberal arts colleges and how inclusive we are. Even though I explain that to people on a daily basis, I have to ask myself, if Wooster is actually as inclusive as it could be?
The answer to that is no. Even though the College’s administration is trying, we are far from what we could be so that we can truly and proudly say that our campus is inclusive especially to international students.
When international students arrive on campus for the first time, we all go through an international student orientation during which we learn about U.S. culture, how college here works and what to say and how to behave in order to fit in.
We are generally encouraged to not just spend our time with other international students but to make domestic friends as well. Some of us come from cultures that are very different from the U.S. and in addition to having to get used to a new environment, college academics in a different language and making friends in general — all while being thousands of miles away from everything we know — we are also working hard on trying to fit in and becoming more “American.”
We as international students are told to do whatever it takes to fit in, to keep trying to be friends with domestic students and be nice and patient with them if they make comments about our culture that are completely inappropriate. We are told to be the patient ones, the forgiving ones, the accepting ones and the ones who are supposed to bridge the gap between internationals and domestic students.
The College is striving to be a very diverse and inclusive place and wants to have high numbers of international students, but then chooses to only tell international students how to assimilate to U.S. culture while the domestic students get no training at all in how to be inclusive.
Doesn’t that seem a little bit odd? How is it purely the responsibility of international students to reach out and make friends with people from the U.S. when we don’t run into the same problems with other international students regardless of whether they’re from the same country as us? Why are we focusing so much on how international students learn to accept that domestic students aren’t aware that they may be saying something offensive to us? Should we not instead also train those very domestic students to not say things that are hurtful or discouraging to us?
Sure, if you bring the argument that domestic students are not aware of what they are doing because they have not been in contact with many international students at their high schools, then why don’t we as the College community ensure that they learn how to interact with, and be welcoming of international students? That way we may be able to prevent public statements that are hurtful to a large international student population. That way, we can prevent individuals from saying that “this is an American college” when we as international students try to get an apology for what wronged us.
Therefore, I propose that the ball should not be just in our court. For a sucessful integration and inclusion of international students into The College of Wooster community, we need effort from both sides. As long as that effort remains absent, we will not have the kind of “fitting in” of internationals that the College, supposedly desires.
Katharina Bochtler a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at KBochtler18@wooster.