By Nina Smit
Iris Bijman – a Dutch student studying this semester at Baruch College – recalls what her father said to her before she headed to New York: “If Trump becomes president you come home immediately”.
At the time, Bijman, 22, shrugged off her father’s comment. “I thought that wasn’t even an option,” she said. After Election Day, Bijman did not go home as her father had initially urged, but she said she was happy that she would be gone from the United States before Donald Trump’s inauguration. “When he becomes president in January, I will be on my way back to the Netherlands,” she said.
The concerns raised by Bijman and her father reflect a wariness felt by many foreign students studying in the U.S. after Trump’s election.
“I think it is crazy that a business man, someone that is not a politician but a populist has become president,” said Paula Garcia, a 22-year-old Spanish exchange student studying at Baruch College. Garcia and Bijman are among 2,430 foreign students studying at Baruch during the fall semester. The international students represent 13,5% of the total student population at Baruch.
Particularly disturbing to foreign students have been Trump’s statements on immigration. During his campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump made comments about Mexicans that many critics called racist. He talked about building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and at one point, he even called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States.
Luise Wiedeman, a 22-year-old exchange student from Berlin, recalled sitting on the train on Election Day when the results came out asking herself why people around here were not freaking out. “I just picked up my boyfriend at the airport and I was in such a bad mood, poor him. But I was a bit scared, and I still think this is one of the worst things that could have happened,” Wiedeman said. “Something went wrong in America, now I’m just hoping for the best.”
Whether the outcome of the presidential election will deter foreign students from spending a semester in the U.S. is still unclear, said Dr. Richard Mitten, the director of the Study Abroad Office at Baruch College.
“I think it will to some extent depend upon the tone set by President-elect Trump once he is inaugurated,” Mitten said. “However, I could well imagine that many students, especially Muslim students, will think twice about coming to the U.S. if led by someone who wanted to discriminate against their religion.”
Recently, two students at Baruch College reported that they were victims of attacks by people invoking Trump’s victory. An e-mail received from president of Baruch, Mitchel B. Wallerstein, explained that a member of the community, a first-year student of the Muslim faith, had stated that she was harassed on a train simply for wearing a hijab, which is the head covering that observant Muslim women wear when they are out in public. According to the student, three men approached her shouting the name of the President-elect and demanded her that she should leave the country, after which they attempted to remove her hijab.
“People might have interpreted Trump’s victory in the election as a kind of license to become more openly racist or hostile to ethnic or religious groups,” Dr. Mitten said. “It remains to be seen whether the recent spate of aggressive behavior represents short-term celebratory exuberance of certain individuals, or is the beginning of something more sustained.”
“The xenophobic tone of the Trump election campaign in my view underlined the importance of acquiring the knowledge and skills one receives by studying abroad” – Dr. Richard Mitten
For many foreign students, the draw of having a study abroad experience in the United States might well outweigh concerns over Trump’s policies, Dr. Mitten said.
“Many foreign students would probably want to come to the US regardless of the tone set by Trump, because they – rightly or wrongly – believe that it might not affect their lives too directly, he said. “Academic institutions throughout the country are striving to send the clear message that foreign students—either exchange students or degree students—are welcome, despite the rhetoric of Trump during the campaign.”
A lot of colleges and universities offered support to their students in the form of organizing consulting hours to answer every possible question students had after the presidential election. So did Baruch College. “It is the case that we, and Baruch College as a whole, have made an effort to make certain out exchange students understand that the college remains a safe and secure area for them, and that we would assist them in taking care of any difficulties that arise,” Dr. Mitten said.
In the end there is no way to know what will happen until the new administration takes office. “The xenophobic tone of the Trump election campaign in my view underlined the importance of acquiring the knowledge and skills one receives by studying abroad,” Dr. Mitten said. “In addition, if more students study abroad, especially on exchange programs, it might have a ripple effect that will counteract the intolerance generated by many Trump supporters, and encouraged by Trump himself.”