Student Union
Campus Ministries Soothe, Rally Students Shaken Over Ukraine
Entering Yale University's St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel, Oksana Goroshchuk spotted sunflowers adorning a candlelit altar and thought of the fields full of her country's national blossom near her grandmother's home in Ukraine.
A mezzo-soprano launched into a traditional folk tune that Goroshchuk used to sing growing up, and the postdoctoral medical researcher broke down in tears of grief — and gratitude for the university community's solidarity with her homeland.
"It's people who support us and people who love us," said Goroshchuk, 32, who was born in Kyiv and whose parents recently escaped the war-torn country.
Across the United States, campus ministries of different denominations are working to bring comfort to college students who, after two years of pandemic disruption and isolation, have been plunged deeper into feelings of crisis and helplessness by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
From Ivy League schools to public institutions to Catholic universities, they're holding prayer vigils, organizing medical supply drives and staging emotional performances of sacred music. Chaplains say religious and nonreligious students alike, especially those with loved ones in war zones, urgently need a sense of community to help them cope.
"One of the best things we do in campus ministry is we foster community," said Lisa Reiter, director of campus ministry at Loyola University Chicago.
At the Wednesday night peace concert and benefit at Yale, dozens of attendees gazed quietly at an image of a crucified Jesus Christ holding a dove, backlit by the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag. Cello suites, organ pieces, classical violin and piano melodies and a Ukrainian Orthodox chant echoed through the chapel.
"There's this mass movement by Russia to take away lives of Ukrainians. But they can't take away the culture, and they can't take away the language or the song," said Sofiya Bidochko, a 19-year-old Yale student from Lviv, Ukraine. "I feel the importance of preserving my Ukrainian-ness when I hear these songs."
To the north at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the campus' Hillel organization recently welcomed several Ukrainian students to a Shabbat dinner, where they supped on matzo ball soup and deli sandwiches. The Jewish group's members listened to their guests talk about their homes and families and promised to support them.
"It was just nice to have this bit of community," said Yevheniia, a 20-year-old student who came to the dinner even though she was baptized Orthodox Christian and considers herself agnostic.
She asked that her last name be withheld to protect her parents — they live in an area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists and recently messaged her to say they were going to a bomb shelter.
Also this month, at the University of Rhode Island, an interfaith peace vigil drew people from Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other faiths together in prayer. A Buddhist chaplain struck a Tibetan singing bowl to mark a moment of silence for those suffering and killed in Ukraine.
Organizers stressed the importance of not only making divine appeals but carrying out concrete, earthly action, and provided resources for students to do so.
"Prayer alone is not enough," said Amy Olson, chair of the university's Chaplains Association and executive director of its Hillel group. "We really put an emphasis on ways that people could either make charitable donations or contribute funds to help the cause, how they could write to their politicians or offer support to the Ukrainian community locally."
A similar solidarity vigil was held at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. And at Loyola University Chicago, the campus ministry partnered with the newly recreated Ukrainian student club to stage a drive that collected 60 tons of medical supplies for war relief.
Campus ministers at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, have been collecting money for humanitarian aid at religious services and say some $700 was put in collection baskets at Ash Wednesday Masses alone. A kiosk has also been set up with a scannable QR code for online donations.
The school is home to many Somali American students who attended a recent prayer for peace. As the children of refugees or refugees themselves, they have seen firsthand the horrors of war and "get shaken by" seeing them repeated in Ukraine, Muslim chaplain Sadaf Shier said.
Many chaplains said that remote education and a lack of socializing and shared rituals during the pandemic have frayed the social fabric that would normally help assuage the struggles and anxiety of students, some of whom worry the hostilities in Ukraine could spill beyond borders and ignite a World War III.
That means their mission has changed, becoming less focused on just worship and more on helping young adults re-engage with each other and the world. Often that entails channeling their concern into charitable action.
"Students have been trying to figure out what to do," said Sister Jenn Schaaf, assistant Catholic chaplain at Yale.
The mezzo-soprano whose performance at Yale moved Goroshchuk to tears was Karolina Wojteczko, a native of Poland who recently graduated from the university and now serves as music director at St. Thomas More.
Wojteczko was inspired to organize the concert by the distress she has noticed among both Eastern European and American friends. That included Russians, who she said are being "shunned from the communities right now." One student with family in both Ukraine and Russia confessed to feeling utterly lost.
The concert has helped people unite, cope and heal.
"After COVID everyone has been so separated," Wojteczko said, "and this is ... a way to just sit there and be, and participate, and feel that you are connected to people who need help in the world."
See all News Updates of the Day
- By VOA News
International students discuss US campus culture shock
International students at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, talked about culture shock in an article in La Voz News, the student newspaper.
"It felt like a major culture shock. Everything was so different, from academics to mannerism," said a student from Mexico.
Read the full story here.
These are the most expensive schools in the US
High tuition costs along with housing and food expenses can add up for students at U.S. colleges and universities.
MSNBC looked at the most expensive schools in the country, with one costing more than $500,000 for a bachelor’s degree. (June 2024)
Uzbekistan students admitted into top US universities
Students from Uzbekistan are among the international students admitted to top colleges and universities in recent years.
Gazata.uz profiled some of the Uzbekistan students attending Harvard, Brown, Princeton and other U.S. universities. (June 2024)
- By Stella Hsu
Reports of visa checks, deportations worry Chinese STEM students in US
Geopolitical tensions and growing competition in tech between the United States and China appear to be spilling over into academia despite commitments from the world’s two biggest economies to boost people-to-people exchanges.
The United States remains the top choice for Chinese students seeking to study abroad with nearly 300,000 studying in American colleges and universities during the 2022-2023 school year. But reports of some cases that students and professors are facing extra scrutiny while passing through immigration and the deportation of others are raising concerns.
For Chen Xiaojin, a doctoral student studying semiconductor materials at a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, it has been six years since she returned to her hometown of Beijing.
At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that kept her from going home. But over the past two years, she has been deterred by accounts of Chinese students majoring in science and engineering being required to reapply for their visas upon returning to China.
She also says she is worried by reports over the past six months of Chinese students being deported, even at nearby Dulles Airport.
"My current research is relatively sensitive, and my boss [adviser] is getting funds from the U.S. Department of Defense, making it even more sensitive,” she told VOA. "I am afraid that I won't be able to return after I go back [to China]."
Chen says that if she did return to China, she would have to apply for a new visa.
In a report late last month, Bloomberg said it had found at least 20 Chinese students and scholars with valid visas who were deported at U.S. Customs since November and barred from reentry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency does not release relevant data.
Immigration attorney Dan Berger represented one Chinese student who was deported late last year. He tells VOA Mandarin that the student studied biological sciences at Yale University and was about to complete her doctorate.
She visited her family in China and got a new visa but was deported by customs at Dulles Airport and barred from reentering the country for five years. Berger said he did not see anything suspicious in the transcript of the conversation between the student and the customs officer.
"We have seen what seems like a pattern over the last six months of Chinese PhD students being turned around…. more than I've seen in quite a while," he said.
Matthew Brazil, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said neither country seems willing to explain the situation. However, he believes that in most cases, the United States must have valid reasons for blocking visa holders from entering the country.
In some cases, the student’s background may not match what is written on the visa application. In other cases, customs agents may also find something that the State Department missed, and once they see it, they are responsible for taking action.
"I wish the Chinese side would be specific about their students who were refused entry,” he said. “The fact that both sides are mum on details and that the Chinese side is engaged with the usual angry rhetoric means that each has security concerns. And that says to me that there was good reason for the U.S. to stop these particular applicants."
Brazil also sees a connection between the entry denials and export control regulations issued by the United States in October 2022 that restrict China's ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one of the law enforcement agencies authorized to investigate violations of export control regulations, he said.
"Beijing's intelligence agencies are known to focus attention on PRC [People's Republic of China] students and scientists headed abroad who study or work on dual-use technologies controlled under the Export Administration Act — compelling Chinese students and scientists to report on what they've learned when they return to China on holiday,” he said. “This has been true for decades."
Bill Drexel, a fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. government did find some cases where students tried to steal strategic technology for China.
"I think it would both not be surprising that they found some really questionable or incriminating evidence for some students,” he said. “It would also not be surprising if, in their hunt for really solid evidence, they also may have made some mistakes on other students.”
Drexel adds that “it’s just kind of an unfortunate fact of the time that we live in and the tactics that the CCP uses when it comes to these measures."
In a post on X in early May, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tried to dispel concerns about visas and entry to the United States for students and scholars. In the post, he said "99.9% of Chinese students holding visas encounter no issues upon entering the United States.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Burns said it is China that is making it impossible to promote people-to-people ties. Burns told the Journal that students attending events sponsored by the United States in China have been interrogated and intimidated.
He also said that since U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held their summit in San Francisco last year, China’s Ministry of State Security and other agencies had interfered with Chinese citizens’ participation at some 61 events.
At a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed those accusations, saying that they did not “reflect reality" and that went against key understandings reached by both countries’ presidents in San Francisco.
“The United States, under the pretext of 'national security,' unjustifiably harasses, interrogates, and deports Chinese students in the U.S., causing them significant harm and creating a severe chilling effect,” Mao said. “The image of the United States in the minds of the Chinese people fundamentally depends on the actions of the United States itself.”
Drexel said he believes Burns’ comments about visas and students' willingness to study in the U.S. still ring true.
“On balance, it's still the case that American universities are overwhelmingly warm towards Chinese students and want them in large numbers," he said.
However, Berger, the immigration lawyer, is concerned about the chilling effect recent cases involving Chinese students could have.
"In general, we are being more careful about advising Chinese graduate students in STEM fields about traveling and letting them know that there is some small risk,” he said.
Even though the risk is small, it does seem to be real at the moment, he said.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
US federal judge blocks new regulation targeting for-profit colleges
A federal judge in Texas has blocked a regulatory provision targeting for-profit colleges that was scheduled to take effect in July 2024.
Times Higher Education reports that the rule, which would affect student loans, was challenged by for-profit institutions. (June 2024)
