Student Union
5,000 New Voters Registered at #March4OurLives
At combined #March4OurLives events — which drew tens of thousands to march in protest of gun violence across America — nearly 5,000 people registered to vote.
Most were younger than 30, said Aaron Ghitelman, communications director of HeadCount, a voter registration organization that registers mostly younger voters at concerts and music festivals.
The team at HeadCount used their expertise in crowded and chaotic environments to help people register at the March 30 rallies, including New York City and Washington, D.C.
“When Emma Gonzalez gave that incredible speech that ended with a call to everybody to register to vote, it was like, ‘Okay, what can we do?’” Ghitelman told VOA, referring to youth activist Gonzalez and her classmates, who since surviving the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have driven more youths to participate in politics.
While 18 is the age when Americans can vote, they can be registered as early as 16 years old in some states. HeadCount as well as USA.gov offers guidelines on their websites.
Ghitelman said a tweet announcing their list of state rules for registration was retweeted more than 20,000 times.
"There was a lot of interest in that list,” he said, especially among people who did not know voters could be registered before age 18.
HeadCount partnered with grassroots organizations such as HipHopCaucus, Mi Familia Vota, Voto Latino, League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, Voterise and Fair Elections Legal Network (FELN). He said HeadCount and its partners, armed with clipboards and information sheets about state laws for voters, registered people from 41 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
According to a study by Tufts university, college student voter turnout increased slightly in 2016 compared to the 2012 election, but still, at 48.3 percent, was less than half of American college students voting.
In the 2016 presidential election, however, for the first time, Millennials and Gen X voters constituted a larger share of American voters than the Baby Boomer generation. Voters younger than 52 cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election — a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
And that number is something the organizers of the March for Our Lives and many of its attendees are looking to change.
“Politicians, either represent the people or get out,” Cameron Kasky, a Parkland student, said in front of the Capitol to hundreds of thousands of attendees of the Washington rally.
“Stand for us or beware: The voters are coming.”
Some students who traveled to Washington to voice their opinion at #March4OurLives but who cannot vote, urged young Americans who can, to sign up and exercise their rights.
Kimberly Salinas and Elizabeth Peralta were brought illegally to the United States when they were young children, but under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), they are allowed to study and work in the U.S. legally. But, unless they become citizens, they are not allowed to vote.
Having traveled from North Carolina with a group of peers for the march, the two spoke between tears about the importance of young people participating in politics.
“Here, we are allowed to share our voices,” Peralta, who was born in Mexico, told VOA the night before the march, but shrugged her shoulders when pressed about the right to vote.
“It’s better thinking what we can do than what we can’t,” Salinas chimed in quietly.
“There are so many limitations that we face, but there’s a lot of open doors every now and then,” Salinas said. “You’ve got to take advantage of those rather than focus on the downsides of it. And encourage our friends to speak up — the ones who can — speak up for us.”
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- By VOA News
Michigan State international students get their own space
Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, is setting aside a space in the International Center for international students.
Nidal Dajani, vice president of the school's International Student Association, said that the club plans to use the space to host events and hopes to collaborate with other student groups.
- By Dylan Ebs
International students find community during Pride Month
For LGBTQ+ international students, Pride Month, observed in June, is a unique time to reflect.
They hold on to multiple identities — both their LGBTQ+ identity and their cultural background — but coming to terms with them is not always easy.
For graduate student David Zhou, these identities can feel conflicting as transgender rights in China remain a controversial issue and spaces for LGBTQ people close. Zhou, 25, is transgender and pursuing an education in the STEM field at an urban university in the Midwestern United States.
VOA is using a pseudonym for Zhou’s first name and is not naming his university to protect his identity due to safety concerns back home in China. Zhou is not open about his transgender identity to his family.
During Pride Month, Zhou said he attended multiple LGBTQ+ events in his community and is surrounded by a supportive group of LGBTQ+ students who can relate to his experiences. But he’s not open about his identity to everyone on campus and said he doesn’t disclose his preferred pronouns to everyone to avoid transphobic comments.
“I feel like I have to make some judgments of the character of that person to see if they’re a good person to disclose [my identity] to,” Zhou said.
Zhou’s Pride Month celebrations included attending local markets with LGBTQ+ vendors and hanging out with his LGBTQ+ friends.
“They normalized being trans and for a long time I feel like trans identity is, should I say a vulnerability, brings me fear and worrying about discrimination, but having those events are helpful because it allowed me to see that queer people could just [live] openly,” he said.
At social events where few international students are present, Zhou said it can be tough to fit in.
“There's a lot of times like when they were talking about things I kind of, don't really understand, mostly because I kind of lack some background experience or knowledge,” he said.
Zhou said he is not aware of specific groups for LGBTQ+ international students at his university, but said international students are more prevalent in graduate programs and therefore find representation in organizations for LGBTQ+ graduate students.
In China, transgender individuals must obtain consent from an “immediate family member,” even for adults hoping to transition, which critics say limits the autonomy of transgender individuals while supporters say the policy protects doctors from violence by upset parents.
Struby Struble, a former coordinator of the University of Missouri LGBTQ+ Resource Center, told NAFSA: Association of International Educators in 2015 that LGBTQ+ international students face a “double barrier” on campus.
“With their international student friends, they feel isolated because they’re the LGBT one,” she said. “But then among the LGBT students on campus, they feel isolated because they’re the international one.”
Nick Martin, associate director of the Q Center, Binghamton University’s LGBTQ+ student support office, said when international students tour the center, there’s often a sense of hesitation as they enter a type of space that may not be present in their home country.
“I compare that to a year in after they've come into the space, they've again, maybe come to some of our events, they've got more connected,” he said.
Martin said graduate students have a unique interest in the Q Center as they may use the office for research and advocacy purposes that align with their studies.
“For older students, there may be hesitancy in a different way, but I think it's more in the vein of they want to do some of the advocacy work,” he said.
Martin said he thinks about how both his office and BU’s international student office can support students who come from countries with few — if any — protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.
“It's been a learning process of what those students really need, but I think I've kind of learned that a lot of students are just looking for the safe space that we offer,” Martin said.
- 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.
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