Boston University Student Government will hold an International Students Forum Nov. 13 to address major issues in the international students community, SG officials said at their meeting Monday evening.
SG Director of Social Affairs Rebekah Leopold said the forum will provide a space for international students to voice concerns about marginalization.
“We started working on this [international student issues] and thought maybe we can use this method to solve an issue,” Leopold, a College of Arts and Sciences sophomore, said. “But what we realized was that we would like to hear it directly through the students.”
The forum, which will take place in the SG office in the basement of the George Sherman Union, will address issues related to vacation housing, English-language learning resources, mental health resources and community resources, Leopold said.
“The conversation will be informal,” she said. “It will be a discussion among all the students there. There will be several pre-determined topics that we’ll discuss, based on our preliminary outreach, and there will also be a lot of time for any new topics that people bring up that they would like to discuss.”
BU is currently made up of 13 percent international students, and as of last year, holds the highest proportion of international students at all universities, Leopold said. With the forum, SG hopes to get feedback from international students in order to enrich resources available to them.
“This university has so many incredible resources, so for instance, as we’re trying to give international students better language-learning resources, we’ll team up with the ERC,” she said. “As we’re trying to provide them with better mental health resources, we’ll team up with Student Health Services … So, each issue, we will approach differently.”
Senate Chair Avi Levy, a CAS junior, said the forum will provide a good starting point for making changes to address issues of the international student community.
“It will be a good way to get feedback about things they want to see changed or made better for them,” Levy said.
For instance, finding somewhere to stay over holiday breaks is a major issue for many international students, Levy said.
“Especially for ones [students] who can’t go home, finding a place to go when BU is closed is pretty difficult,” he said. “For first-year students, I’m sure it’s pretty intimidating for them to have to find somewhere to stay for five days over Thanksgiving. Hopefully, they’re lucky and they have friends to stay with, but I’m sure that there’s some problem they run into when they’re trying to make their plans.”
In addition to the announcement of the forum, officials from SG’s Department of Advocacy announced an improvement to the BU Shuttle system. After requests from the Advocacy Department, BU officials changed the standby bus that parks near Student Village II from a single bus to a double bus, providing an additional double bus to the shuttle rotation.
“If you travel [on] the bus on a daily basis, you know how crowded it is,” said SG Executive Vice President Richa Kaul. “People up against the windows — tons of people can’t even get on. SG really hopes this is one step forward in helping the student body in a small way.”
This change is the first in what Kaul hopes will be an ongoing series of improvements made to the BUS system, she said.
“Our students really feel strongly about improvements that can be made with the BUS, and we’re trying to answer some of the concerns that the students have brought up,” Kaul, a CAS sophomore, said. “Getting more times on the bus, maybe weekend times [or] getting signage at the stops [are other goals].”
Additionally, SG Senior Associate Director of Outreach Brianna West, a Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation senior, promoted an initiative called “On Wednesdays We Wear Scarlet,” which encourages all students to display school spirit by wearing scarlet and white, BU school colors, each Wednesday.
West also announced a change in location to the SG-sponsored “Red, White and BU” talent show. It will now be held at Morse Auditorium, but will still take place Saturday.
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