Shelbie Harris
News Editor
Rosa Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order to give up her seat to a white passenger in the colored section of a Montgomery city bus nearly 60 years ago. Eight years later, America witnessed activist Martin Luther King Jr. share his dream with the nation. Less than 10 years after that iconic speech, the Senate passed The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
However, just this last year, an Idaho State University professor demanded that a group of Arabic students must sit in the back row of the classroom, as they were likely to cheat from their American counterparts. Additionally, within the engineering department, some professors dictate seating arrangements, and if a student does not sit in his assigned seat he is marked absent for the period.
Many factors contribute to the mistreatment of Arabs in the United States, but particular events have occurred in America that increased and enraged these feelings in many.
In the realm of higher education, knowing how students feel about their college experience is vital to building trust, understanding and respect amongst each other in an ever-changing world with regard to diversity.
“There is a lack of understanding in the culture, not from students, but from faculty and staff,” said Maria Fletcher, International Programs Office director at Idaho State University. “The professors say, ‘well these students lack the academic standards,’ but this is not true. 110 Arabic students walked out the door over the summer, and where did they go? If these students lack the academic standards, why are they going to California State, or schools in Virginia, or New York? Why am I transferring the SEVIS [Student and Exchange Visitor Information System] records to some of the best schools in the country?”
With the 2015-2016 academic year cost for international students being roughly $20,000, ISU lost over $2 million from 110 students leaving in just one year.
It’s been 10 years since former President George W. Bush and former Saudi monarch Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud launched the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, and before this year the amount of Saudi Arabian students at ISU had increased each year since 2010. But ISU waited until fall 2014 to host its first ever diversity week through the Diversity Resource Center, and perhaps it came too late to improve Arabic and American collegiate relationships.
“When I came to ISU in 2012, it was open enrollment for all Saudi students, they could go to any department if they wanted,” said Nezar Alnejidi, a marketing student, previous Saudi Club president and current ambassador for international students. “Now the Saudi government has reduced that amount to 15 percent. Not one department in the engineering is open, and business has only one department open.”
According to Adman Esilan, a senior health information systems student, the amount the Saudi government has limited departments will not decrease, but will rather increase, possibly up to 90 percent.
Last semester Adman’s wife received a paper back from a professor that was incorrectly marked that resulted in an “X” grade for the course meaning she did not attend or stopped attending, so there is no basis for grade. This grade dropped her cumulative GPA below 2.0. After speaking with the professor, he changed the grade, bringing her GPA above 2.0, however a letter from registration indicated she’d be put on academic probation. After speaking to university officials, Adman and his wife received a letter in the mail indicating the registration policies and procedures. Although information on the Idaho State Universities website reads, “Undergraduate students on Academic Warning, Probation One, or Probation Two who attain a cumulative ISU GPA of 2.0 or higher are automatically removed from warning or probation,” the status of the case was never changed.
From fall 2010 to fall 2014 the number of Saudi and Kuwaiti students increased from 46 to 627 and four to 480 students respectively. Though the number of Kuwaiti students enrolled this year compared to last has increased, for the first time in five years the Saudi population has decreased at ISU.
“These are collectivist groups,” said Maria Fletcher. “Meaning, if you offend one person you offend the entire community. Americans are very individualistic: if you are offended, it doesn’t affect somebody else. If you accuse three of four [Arabic] students of cheating, you are actually accusing the entire community.”
Fletcher also said ISU has to find ways to make the students feel safe, and that she doesn’t believe ISU was very good at doing so in the past.
Alnejidi agrees with Fletcher that Arabic students are a collectivist group of individuals, which is why the Saudi population has decreased and why he believes the Kuwaiti population will also follow suit.
“When we Saudis started coming in 2010 we did not see any commercials for ISU, there were not any recruitment efforts, nothing, but we came,” Alnejidi said. “We are a connected, global society, so we came here by word of mouth and the university was wonderful to the first group of students. Every one person brought five or six people, and after a few years the Kuwaiti students caught word of ISU.”
Initially the faculty of ISU embraced these students, however just three years after these students settled in Pocatello, according to Alnejidi, things took a drastic turn for the worse.
“Faculty started focusing badly on Middle Eastern students in unfair ways, so these students began to tell others not to come,” he said. “‘[ISU] is not a good place as we told you before; I am now in second or third year and it is very bad.’ Kuwait students are just now realizing this and are going through the same transition.”
Fletcher, who just returned from a recruitment trip to Oman, believes ISU now understands the significance of understanding cultural differences, with implementing a buddy system as a possible solution to the misunderstandings.
Fletcher hopes to generate a system where the IPO pairs 30-50 domestic students up with international students in order to show them the ropes, and help them adjust to college life in a different campus.
Both domestic and international students feel this forced relationship won’t produce the desired results.
“I think that idea sounds really great on paper,” said Marcus Nelson a junior political science student. “Where relationships are really built with these students is not at the university, but at Goody’s or at the coffee shop, or it’s having them invite you to their home where they make this delicious kabsa. They are the most generous and hospitable people that I’ve ever had the chance of encountering.”
It’s possible the damage to the Arabic community may have already been dealt, though it’s never too late to try and improve the relationships between all student and the faculty body. It’s possible the cultural understanding will remain deadlocked, but only time will tell what lies in store for Pocatello and the ISU community.
“This year I added two classes in Idaho Falls and I am experiencing a different, much different society over there,” said Alnejidi. “Much better, when you talk to somebody they answer you with many words; you have a conversation. They actually ask us questions, so you have a conversation. People are smiling, everybody says hi and maybe it’s because they didn’t have the same press that they have here in Pocatello, but I don’t know for sure.”
