Student Union
Student Journalists on Front Lines of COVID-19 Coverage
College student journalists have been at the forefront of university COVID-19 coverage, breaking news stories about campus outbreaks and holding university leadership accountable for its handling of the pandemic.
But COVID-19 has been a challenge for students, too, as many college papers have had to maintain virtual newsrooms, cut back print editions, and struggle to build rapport among their remote teams.
Student newspapers have offered a unique inside scoop about how students are navigating the pandemic.
“We know of student hospitalizations that the university doesn’t because they have to be self-reported to the university,” said Eli Hoff, managing editor for the University of Missouri’s The Maneater.
“And we as students are more likely to get in contact with those people than university administrators can or middle-age town newspapers can because we’re students, they’re students and there’s more of a connection there,” said Hoff.
Because they are on the front line of coverage, the responsibility is large, Hoff said.
“There’s more of a burden of responsibility on us as student journalists to be on the ground for whatever reporting we can and being the first to get that kind of information just because we have access to it. It kind of falls to us to report it,” he said.
Matt Cohen was a sports reporter for the Indiana Daily Student at Indiana University in Bloomington before switching to the enterprise team when most collegiate sports events were canceled because of the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.
“Being stuck on Zoom is hard,” said Cohen. “It’s been a challenge trying to really be in depth in your reporting when you can’t be there.”
“Journalism wasn’t meant to be done remotely,” he said.
Being insider and outsider
Covering your peer group is another challenge for student journalists.
“It’s hard because Greek life students here never want to talk to me or the media, because we always make them look bad,” Cohen said. “And they’re not wrong, that’s true.
“But also, you know, they do stupid stuff like throw parties of 100 people in the middle of a pandemic and there’s not really a way to put a positive spin on that … so it’s hard to actually get access, but I got better as I got more into it,” he said.
Cohen said he received some criticism from fraternities and sororities after reporting on the suspension of several IU students following large football celebrations when Indiana University beat Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State.
“I think sometimes people have a hard time differentiating what is the media and what is the school, and people were all coming after me about not letting college students have fun or whatever. Not letting them be kids,” he added.
The IU Barstool — a sports and pop culture blog popular on campuses nationwide — tweeted a meme mocking him, he said. Cohen said he took it in good humor.
On the COVID front lines
Being on the ground, collegiate journalists are a watchdog of their university’s handling of the coronavirus.
“We just had an issue where we asked the question: ‘How many students report their own cases?’ And we found that 60% of students don’t even know how to report their own cases to the university,” said Maxwell Mayleben, editor in chief for The Reporter at Minnesota State University at Mankato.
“So, our numbers look really good, but are they reflecting what it actually is? We’re asking those kinds of questions,” he said.
“We’ve also been doing a lot of editorials this year, too. Basically, kind of calling out the university and asking, ‘Are you doing enough?’ or ‘Is it too much?’ We’re taking a stance on what we want to see from the university and what students should expect from the university,” he added.
Challenging institutions
At the University of Missouri System, President Mun Choi blocked students on Twitter at the beginning of the semester because of criticism following his handling of the coronavirus on campus.
“That’s obviously a concern because his Twitter account is something used to send public information and in a pandemic that’s extra important,” said Hoff.
Students filed what’s called a sunshine request to gain access. By morning, Choi had unblocked everyone.
“So that was reassuring to see, and we were proud with the sunshine case that we were able to legally prove it was a public account,” he added.
“We’ve made them mad on occasion. We’ve done some coverage that is negative and done some editorials that are very, very critical of them. We called for the resignation of our university chancellor at the start of the school year. We haven’t been afraid to do that, but we’ve been able to remain entirely independent,” said Hoff.
Megan Mittelhammer, news editor for The Red & Black, an independent student newspaper serving the University of Georgia, said accountability was one of the things the publication focused on most this semester.
“Towards the end of summer, before the start of the semester, we had a UGA housing employee die of COVID, but the university refused to report the name and acknowledge that COVID was the cause of death, so we had to find out through the county coroner. And so, a lot of students, faculty, [and] staff were obviously upset,” said Mittelhammer.
UGA said the school’s privacy policy didn’t allow it to comment on the death of an employee, Mittelhammer said.
“So that was kind of the first little hint of like, ‘OK, what else? Are they not going to report before we go back to school? Will they report these numbers accurately?’ " she said.
Mittelhammer also said The Red & Black reported on the reliability of the University of Georgia’s COVID-19 self-screening tool, DawgCheck.
While it is mandatory for faculty, staff and students to report a positive COVID-19 test through DawgCheck, some people don’t, she said.
“So, towards the middle of August, when everybody was back, we had sorority and fraternity parties downtown. We saw a big spike in cases about two or three weeks later after we got back,” she explained. “What’s accurately being detected on campus?”
Remaining steady
For most student newspapers, the pandemic has also forced a once busy newsroom onto a virtual platform, often delaying production and making it difficult to build rapport among members.
“Normally, we would have weekly staff meetings in person, but now it’s all on Zoom, as if Zoom classes weren’t enough,” said Mansoor Ahmad, an international student from Pakistan and the photo/web editor for The Reporter at Minnesota State University at Mankato.
Maneater’s managing editor Hoff said that because of their remote work it has been challenging to build a sense of camaraderie among the members.
“I’m able to read a lot of content, see a lot of bylines, but I’m not able to know the person behind that byline ... know who’s stuff I’m editing,” said Hoff.
“It’s hard when my only interaction with someone is through Google Drive comments,” said Hoff. “I’m trying to be super-duper nice in the comments because I don’t want to go in with harsh edits and be the jerk editor because we meet through Google Drive.”
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- 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
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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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- 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.
