Section F
KANSAN
84th Year, No.1
The University of Kansas—Lawrence, Kansas
Section F
Thursday, August 23, 1973
Outsiders
KU's Foreign Students Face Barriers, Communication Breakdowns
There Are Many Things, Though, That Foreigners Find To Be Happy About
KU's foreign students; how do they think and what do they want? Zihab Iqbal, the Kansan's associate editor, last spring interviewed members of KU's alien minority to discover the answers to these questions. Here is what he found.
By ZAHID IQBAL
Korean Associate Editor
The girl face me, the "inscrutable foreigner," is nervous—and perhaps afraid—as she listens to my reasons for interviewing her.
As I continue, she glances at the others in the busy newsroom-American students, most of them at work, a few of them just talking or laughing.
I amile encouragingly at her and pop my first question, trying to make it sound very
She turns back to me. We have at least one thing in common. For in the confusion of all those faces, the pounding of typewriters and the staccato chatter of the telegrapher, one thing is obvious—we are both aliens here.
"TELL ME, how do you like it here?"
"Oh, pretty good. It's nice."
Her voice训软 off uncertainty as I peer rather closely at her. I don't think I can be blamed for doing that; each of the three other foreign students I have interviewed so far has given me a nice answer. I have been a automatic, programmed response, just a bit too pat.
I am trying into matters that may not be any of my business but I have a job to do. I must satisfy myself that "pretty good" is for foreign students, "foreign students to everything American."
I shift my ground, ask when she first came to Lawrence, what her feelings were in the first few weeks, the people she got to see, all things she did, the food she ate and so on.
And with this is a resignation to unhappiness, a shrug of the shoulder and
BUT THAT is not an easy task. Despite my being a foreigner too, I can sense the reluctance on my part to speak so clearly. So, in impulse, I tell her that no names will be used in my story and that she may speak freely and frankly. I am made to repeat the assurance, and then the reply is: "Yes."
The inscrutable foreigner feels, after all,
Out come feelings of extreme loneliness,
disappointment, insecurity and resentment
at being rejected by American students.
The floodgates open. The reticence of the past few minutes gives way to an outpouring of hurt feelings and complaints about things that have made her unhappy.
IN THE DAYS that follow, I speak to many others. In each case the interviews follow the same pattern, with unhappiness being expressed in varying degrees. But always, at the end, there is the brave smile and the contradictory "Oh, I like it here."
It would have been a good thing if this were true. Unfortunately, for many of them their troubles began the day they landed here. Because they did not know better, they found themselves in helpless situations.
One student rode in from Kansas City in a taxi because the last bus for Lawrence had already left. He managed to find overnight accommodation at one of the residence centers in the city, water fountain to keep his hunger pains away until he could bear it no more.
THEN HE looked through the telephone directory until he found a familiar name, explained his plight to the student from his country whom he had called up, and was eating his first meal in 8 hours, shortly afterwards.
There are other tales which just add up to a shocked realization on the part of the newly-arrived foreign student that no one knows about him. In the days that follow he may also begin to think that no one cares, and may accept this.
It is all very well, probably, for them to suffer in silence because they convince themselves that no one cares enough to do anything. But in the meantime, their "hosts," the Americans, haven't an inkling that anything is wrong.
IN THE MEANTIME, more and more foreign students come to Kansas each year, eager and bright-eyed, and receive their diplomas. So many are promised. Later, they realize that the
One person was hurt by the suggestion that they might actually be unhappy but said a little later: "Come to think of it, I guess it would be kinda tough if you tried to live in a new place with almost nothing to relate to."
packet is possibly the extent of their "Welcome to KU."
I spoke to a few American students to see whether they had ever thought of the problems foreign students might be facing. A few said they thought the foreign students were very happy here because that was what they always said.
One person was hurt by the suggestion that they might actually be unhappy but said a little later: "Come to think of it, I guess it would be kinda tough if you tried to live in a new place with almost nothing to relate to."
Strangely enough, foreign students agree. In fact, the most common reason for continuing to stay in this country, despite various problems, was the degree they
ONE STUDENT said that a little unhappiness was the price foreign students would have to pay "for the benefit of an American," it wouldn't possibly get in their own country."
The feeling expressed most often was that once this was over, they would be able to return to their countries, and a world turned upside down. This is what a different culture would then right itself.
"But that's not fair; they might be prepared to take things that way, but that doesn't say much for us," an American girl protested.
"WHAT DO THESE guys say when they get back? We got enough people hating us in other countries; we need a few friends," said another American student.
hoped to take back with them, after graduation.
But if it's merely a question of "image," Americans need worry little. Foreign students consider their inability to fit in and be harpy a reflection upon themselves.
Most of them use the rare occasions when they do get together with Americans to take photographs to show back home. It is not uncommon to take different would contribute a less face of.
I asked a "concerned" American student whether he would be willing to take part in an effort to improve the lot of foreign students at KU.
"LIKE I say, if I had the time I sure would," he said. "But when I get a few minutes I go out for a beer or something of the guys: so I really see no way."
In the meantime, the foreign student continues to be a part of the campus community, an insular individual or member of the community. He is never really a part of the community.
It takes time for a foreign student to get to be one of the "regular guys." Many don't make it in five years. Some make it in five months.
"IDON'T know if the trouble was with me or with them," another student said, adding that she found it easy to be friends with other foreign students. "I feel isolated," she said, "but I manage not to be unhappy because I can go home each vacation."
Foreign Students Encounter Clash of Customs
"There is a barrier between us and the Americans," said one student, and others added.
"They made me feel different," he said, and when I got used to the idea, it was OK. "I don't think about it."
One student said he was happy after he and accepted that he would never fit in with them.
"LANGUAGE IS probably the greatest barrier," one student said, although he spoke English well enough to be clearly understood. Another spoke the inability of American students to understand the language has no time for anything they cannot understand."
I tried to find out reasons for a foreign student's feeling "inferior" in a society dedicated to the freedom and the equality of man.
"Now I know what Negroes have felt all these years in this country," complained one student, speaking of what he called a "racist" American roommates to look down upon him.
Judging from the comments made by all my interviewees, I got the impression that appearance and fluency in English had a lot to do with my own learning. My student could be friends with Americans.
"A man who cannot understand you will not listen to you for long," said another, answer
A EUROPEAN student said she thought that the fact that her appearance was like an American's helped her fit in more than students from other countries might.
"People who have trouble communicating are really lost," she said.
A student from one of the Scandinavian countries said that the few Americans he could call friends wondered why he associated with other foreign students from Norway.
"Such attitudes have made me cymical and sarcastic. I tend now to look down upon them."
The creation of great misunderstandings between Americans and students from different parts of the world is probably one of the greatest challenges in the future of munications breakdown between the two.
ALREADY, SOME damage appears to have been done. Denied the cultural interchange each student comes here in ex-cepteur, he is forced to hold in contempt everything American.
The urge to give of themselves seems to be very strong in foreign students. American offices abroad instruct them to come out here armed with information and photographs about their studies, and they are here as ambassadors of goodwill.
When they realize that no one is sufficiently curious about their countries or their people to listen to them, the students are often bitterly disappointed. Faced with an American's apathy toward their own culture, some students tend to react to questions about American culture with a "What文化?"
I told my interviewees that Americans
When they realize that no one is sufficiently curious about their countries or their people to listen to them, the students are often bitterly disappointed. Faced with an American's apathy toward their own culture, some students tend to react to questions about American culture with a "What culture?"
charged that foreign students herded together with others from their own countries and were themselves responsible for their isolation.
MOST STUDENTS admitted that this might be partially true, but argued that they 'had to go to our own kind in deserts. You have to have someone you can talk to'.
Most foreign students try to find excuses for their hosts' behavior. One put it down to a reluctance on the part of Americans to form close friendships or become emotionally attached to people, places or things.
"They have become so transient they don't even belong to one place for long," she said. "Maybe forming close friends would interfere with this, so they stay away."
Several others, who have been to other regions in the United States, said that the lack of friendliness seemed to be peculiar to the most est, where people seem "affraid of them."
ONE OF THE Americans interviewed was a University of Texas doctoral candidate now with the University of Missouri as an instructor in sociology. Her dissertation concerned the experience of students involving foreign students in other parts of the country.
She said she was positive this region was
less friendly than back East because of a strong conservative streak in the people. She added that in her own native city of Tex., things would probably be worse.
She said she realized the foreign student community was cut off from the rest of the community. This, she said, was partly because of ethnocentricism and an unwillingness on the part of Americans to give time to people who would be going away.
Some foreign students seem concerned enough to want some kind of program for cultural interchange that would erase the damage done to the foreign-American relationship, they believe that a "criminal shortsightedness" on the part of the University is responsible for the communication breakdown.
One student called for "concerted action to let the Americans know we are here and eager to learn about them." Another said, "We should be good that we should be cut off this way."
These are the ones who are hopeful that something can still be done. But others have already turned away, convinced that "Americans are interested only in them."
Some attempt to bring foreign students together with Americans is made through monthly People-to-People programs, which, for a small amount of money, take foreign students on guided tours to places outside Lawrence. Students expressed appreciation of this and the Small World, wives and children of foreigners at KU.
REACTIONS TO THE Lawrence Host Family program were less enthusiastic. Students said they saw little good coming out what turned out to be for most of them a one-shot get-together with an American family. One student called it "humbug."
Some students have had better luck with the families assigned to them and manage to get together more than once a semester. Three of the students I spoke to told me of their difficulties in finding a family that had done for her the things her own family would have done.
INQUIRIES REVEALED that the people in question were the Stockwells, 303 Arizona St. I asked Hiram Stockwell, who is assistant director of the KU printing service, why he and his wife had done more for this girl than the program called for.
Explaining that he and his wife had been co-chairpersons of the program some time earlier, Stockwell said their actions had been to the definite need the girl for assistance.
"She was completely alone—these people knew few other people—and she needed advice, transportation and other assistance," he said.
"If we were in another country we would probably have wanted someone to do the same for us. And this was certainly no burden," he added.
FACED WITH such isolated examples of friendship and concern, the foreign student finds his concept of mid-Western unfriendship rapidly disintegrating.
"I guess there are a lot of good people around," says one. "We aren't looking hard at them."
The foreign students I interviewed said it defeated the possibility of teaching young men and women a spirit of interdependence and cooperation with which to face the
One of the big problems that hinders greater interaction between foreign and American students at KU seems to be the American grading system.
Foreign students said they had been used to helping each other out, exchanging notes and books, and studying together for examinations.
"HERE, IT is all competition. If one of your classmates falls ill and can't take an exam, you go up on the curve," said one student. "What is the University teaching? Students come in, learn how to be selfish and go out."
THE COMPLIANTS run on and on—trivial matters in some cases—but all adding up to bewilderment at what life at KU has turned out to be for the foreign student.
Some foreign students go to the extent of faulting themselves for their inability to fit in.
"It may be that some of our habits annoy them and so they treat us this way instead of telling us what is wrong," one student offered.
ONE STUDENT said that girls tended to be friendlier as long as a foreign student did not date American boys. Once she began doing that, the girls stopped being friends,
"I think Americans have so little time for themselves that they cannot be bothered
The girls I spoke to either did not date or had bad just one date. One girl shylly explained that American men were used to greater degrees of intimacy with their dates than a girl from a less permissive culture was able to adjust to.
As for the male foreign student community, the ones who date at all are few. Many said they were friends with American students and believed that little or no "biology" was involved.
ALTHOUGH I thought it would interest a student of psychology to know how many adult males "managed" in such a state of sexual limbo, only one person admitted that foreign males were possessed of any "urges."
Only one of the students I interview had married an American girl. he said he was in love with her.
The student who responded to leads in this direction was a married student who stated that when even day and night concentration on his books had failed, he had made a short trip back to his country and brought back a wife.
not more marriages between Americans and foreigners.
One student called for "concerted action to let the Americans know we are here and eager to learn about them." Another said, "We need confrontation. It is not good that we should be cut off this way."
"But in the United States people think a foreign student is out to have a good time in America," he said.
STRANGELY enough, foreign students do not seem to sought-after in this country as in England and other parts of Europe. They are not dreaming of a comfortable life in their husband's country without ever having to work, but most of such marriages are known to work out. In some cases the husbands have massive societies oppressive, and return
This may not be true, but one sophomore I spoke to informed me with a glint in his eye that he was transferring to a junior college where he might find more willing girls.
ANOTHER STUDENT he had once read a letter in Playboy, written by a foreign student desperately in need of advice on how to get his letters urged. Instead of the advice generally handed out, said the student, the magazine advised the letter-writer to divert himself by courtesies and told him to avert eyes from slams; he drew his mind in the other direction.
you appear that this is the first time
SANING : Page 2
KU Students, Yet Alone