Yale students abroad: who's got their backs?

By Ewan MacDougall

One summer day before her junior year, Lara Devgan, TD '01, wanted to take a break from her job working at Aga-Khan Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. The research at the hospital was taxing, and she felt lonely as the only American in what she described as "a profoundly different world full of disease and pollution." She went to a travel agency to arrange a vacation at Mombasa—a seaside resort on Kenya's coast—and stood at the end of the line. Suddenly, two gun-bearing Kenyans burst in. "Before I could react, one was holding a gun to my head. I was a hostage," Devgan recalled. The men demanded and received all things of value, including Devgan's pearl earrings and $100, and ran out of the store. Within seconds, gunshots were fired. Three people hit the ground—the robbers and an innocent bystander—killed by the police.

HYURA CHOI/YH

Of course, murders, muggings, and other violent crimes can happen anywhere. The majority of students who opt to go abroad during their college years remember not harrowing times but an overwhelmingly positive experience. "Though I wouldn't do it again for a long time," Devgan said, "it was a great experience."

Still, study abroad does place students in new environments with unfamiliar customs. The inevitable adjustment period makes them easy targets, and being unprepared—not knowing safety numbers, not knowing where to find the right authorities—can worsen their situations. In recent years, a number of well-publicized crimes against American students have raised worries about the safety of studying abroad. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in January 1998 that five female students in Guatemala were raped after a group of 16 college students was attacked and robbed at gunpoint. The Chronicle also wrote of the March murder of two American students in Costa Rica. Admittedly, the tragedy involved a tiny percentage of the 3,000 who go there yearly—but the article cited other alarming statistics. Between 1996 and 1998, colleges sent students to 16 countries that the State Department warned Americans to avoid and to 11 countries where the Peace Corps pulled back its volunteers.

In such an atmosphere, what is a university's role in insuring the security of students it sends to foreign countries? Schools are often caught between two goals—giving students the independence to reap the benefits of total immersion, and at the same time providing a sense of security by extending the hand of the university overseas.

Keeping a tight leash

Yale falls on the side of independence. The only program that Yale maintains on its own is Yale-in-London. For all other countries, the International Education and Fellowship Programs (IEFP) office uses a list of 100 approved programs connected with other schools. The list reflects programs that Yalies have participated in recently, and approval for new programs is fairly easy to come by. "Most get approved," Dean Catherine Hutchinson, head of IEFP, said. "We leave the students responsible, and most applications are automatic." The few requirements are that the program's faculty are accredited, that serious courses are taught, and that students in the program speak the official language with intermediate proficiency.

IEFP's approach is passive in comparison to other universities. Schools like Brown and the University of Pennsylvania have larger offices that exert greater control. "Everything is centralized with us," Joyce Randolph, director of the Office of International Programs at Penn, said. In her case, the school sponsors many of the programs itself. This, according to Randolph, "helps with the monitoring of programs so we can ensure their credibility with faculty." Penn's tight structure includes a review by a task force every five years; also, they "are making revisions all the time based on reports that come out of visits [that staff have] made to the programs."

Brown, too, maintains close watch. "We appoint a faculty director committee for each region of the world," Mell Bolen, Associate Director of Brown's Office of International Programs (OIP), said. Each committee has three faculty members with expertise in the area.

Letting differences roll

The programs at these universities "have three times as many staff as we do," Hutchinson pointed out. Yale's smaller number of personnel necessarily exerts less control. However, this allows the students a degree of freedom impossible at the other schools. Colleges that sponsor their own programs must maintain and support the facilities and provide housing and workspace for professors and students. To finance these foreign institutions, they require students with a particular country in mind to attend that university's programs and no other. Penn makes it difficult to get new programs approved. "The petition process is very rigorous," Randolph said. Student options, as a result, are limited.

Yale hesitates to establish its own programs overseas, and only partly for financial reasons. "We don't go out. We don't have the money for that," Hutchinson admitted. But it is also a philosophical matter. "There are arguments on both sides—for a complete extension of the university, or letting students experience the culture themselves, letting the differences roll," she said. "We want students not to go in a clump, to do the work as independently as possible." Yale favors this approach, because "we want them to make their own learning happen, to take responsibility for immersion. They can do that better it they're separate."

Getting there

Indeed, Yale students are more challenged by IEFP's policy. When it comes to safety, however, larger programs do have an edge. Brown, for example, has an extensive pre-departure program that includes specific regional information about safety. State Department advisories, warnings from the Center of Disease Control, and, when the university has contacts, consuls, all contribute. "In some cases, we'll impose travel restrictions on students, cancel programs, and have them come home," Bolen explained.

Penn's orientation involves their international students and students who have been abroad. Randolph said, "The purpose is to talk about the differences the students will encounter, what they should prepare for, and what the expectations of the university are for them to perform. It provides them with safety and security advice." The situation in Israel exemplifies their involvement. "When violence broke out in early October, the university sent them e-mails and telephoned them to warn of the danger," Randolph said. Penn declared the area unsafe and offered the students compensation to return home. Most of the students remained, but a resident reporter in Israel still sends updates to the home school twice a day.

Yale has pre-departure orientations as well, but not on the same scale. "How many orientations can you run? We want them short and sweet. Students are busy. We put information in their hands, and they show up when they have questions," Hutchinson said. In cases where applicants want to go to regions with a high potential for harm, Hutchison said, "we will try to discourage students, but they aren't prevented from going, or from getting credit." The security of a program does affect Yale's policy in approving them. Hutchison said, "We find out if programs have risk managers, if they tell you when you should be where, what should do about your American wealth and American-ness."

Coming home

Another challenge students face is the return to American culture. Randolph explained, "when students return they experience reverse culture shock. They've changed. They're not used to American life." The re-entry program at Penn provides a forum for discussion and sharing experiences with many other schools in the area.

Yale's IEFP organizes a welcome-back reception. UCS staff are present at the reception to offer advice on how to use a foreign experience in looking for a job. According to Karyn Jones, the Associate Director of the IEFP, "We invite them in and feed them and talk about the experience. We have guest speakers from UCS explain how to use study abroad to apply for a job or in a resumé. We also offer to talk privately, if a student wants to."

But there is some sentiment that the office isn't doing enough. Diana Erdmann-Sager, DC '01, went to the University of Durban in South Africa on a Yale-approved program. "There was unbelievable crime," she said. "One of my friends was killed. No one stopped at red lights because violent car-jacking was such a problem." After her time in South Africa, she said, "it was difficult to come back and re-adjust. It's difficult to give people an idea of the context in which you lived. It's hard to share the experience, how you've grown and changed. You don't have a shared language if you haven't had a similar experience."

Sara Aviel, DC '02, who went to Botswana independently over the summer, expressed a similar desire for Yale to play an increased role. "It would be beneficial for Yale to provide more guidance," Aviel said. She also pointed out an opportunity for the IEFP to make better use of returned students. "I got three grants, and I only had to write a two-page summary of the experience. It would be valuable if there were more sharing of experiences and analysis of semesters abroad."

Hutchison and Jones are relatively new to Yale—this is only their second year. They feel confident that the IEFP office is going in the right direction. "It's an evolving process," Jones said. "We're trying to encourage faculty support," Hutchinson added."The boost in study abroad participation, the exchange of ideas, and the help our office can offer will happen because students want it." She emphasized the increased support the office strives to provide. However, there is still the sense that Yale maintains its commitment to freedom and student initiative, remaining slightly in the background as it sends students out into the world. "Challenge and risk is what international education is about," she said. "It's essential training to become world citizens."

Back to News...