Student Union
Indian Students in US Anxious About COVID-19 Back Home
Indian students in the United States say they feel helpless amid the massive wave of coronavirus infections back home.
"I have very old grandparents and we just had one of my grandparents' siblings die of COVID, so there is a lot of tension in the air with that," said George Mason University senior Shabrina Parikh. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.
India's second coronavirus wave has become a devastating crisis, with about 21 million cases and more than 230,000 deaths, according to the latest information from Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global outbreak. From April 25 to May 1, India reached a record high, with about 2.6 million reported cases that week and 300,000 to 400,000 cases per day.
"It has been a very challenging time for students from India, including for the ones already here," said Amita Gupta, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education.
Students from India represent 18% of the foreign nationals coming to the U.S. for education, according to the Institute of International Education in New York.
"COVID has significantly reduced that number and importantly impacted their educational experience and quality of life," said Gupta, who also serves as a professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine.
Gupta explained how the doctors in the U.S. have coordinated with counterparts in India during this second surge of cases.
"Our group at Hopkins is working on making brief evidence-based educational videos for lay persons and for practitioners regarding treatments for COVID as many pay out of pocket for therapies that are not evidence-informed or are used sub-optimally," Gupta said.
Vaccines in India
Supplies needed in hospitals, including oxygen cylinders, personal protective equipment, and medications, are running low. Family members are not permitted to see their loved ones in the already overcrowded hospitals, which has made the situation emotionally exhausting for many.
While India is home to the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, only 2% of the country's 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, according to reports.
The country recently expanded its vaccine eligibility to anyone 18 and older, but many locations reported that they did not have any vaccines. Many in India have blamed Adar Poonawalla, Serum Institute's chief executive officer, for the gap.
Poonawalla had been in Britain but was supposed to return to India to oversee vaccine production.
Anxiety in U.S.
George Mason University student Parikh said she is close to her grandparents, and not being there for them has increased her anxiety and nervousness about the COVID crisis in India.
"If I see them calling or if I see a family member calling, I get very nervous because you know what that call may be about," Parikh said.
George Mason University junior Darshni Patel said social distancing in India is complicated by overpopulation, which contributes to the crisis.
"Social distancing looks really different in the East than it does in the West. Like being able to social distance is a luxury, at least where my grandparents live. It is not quite that accessible," Patel said.
"You know, it's really hard to work from home when you work on a farm seven days of the week. It is really hard to social distance when you live in a communal community, you know where you have a room and a house full of 20 to 24 people," she said.
To combat the crisis both in India and abroad, the U.S. has issued a ban on flights from India. It took effect May 4.
College of William and Mary sophomore Sathvika Madisetty said she supports that decision.
"Countries like New Zealand who have had the travel ban have been better at maintaining the numbers of people affected and maintaining the general state of life," Madisetty said.
At the same time, however, she said that from the standpoint of an Indian residing in the U.S. with family in India, she feels every day that her family would be much safer if they came to the U.S.
"Most of my family in India are also pretty old. I mean, even the simplest task of them going to the hospital to pick up their medication is dangerous for them because of how contagious the new variant is," Madisetty said. "So, while I understand the necessity for a travel ban, I can't help but feel selfish and want the best for my family."
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
