International students form group to discuss concerns, new ideas

Matt Radler

When Weinberg sophomore Jing Jiang first arrived at Northwestern from Shanghai in fall 2006, the transition was a rough one.

“I had trouble with language, with communicating with people,” Jiang said. “There’s not too much of an international presence.”

A new student group that hopes to address the concerns of international students like Jiang held its first meeting Thursday night at the Northwestern Room at Norris University Center.

At the meeting, students from India, East Asia, Africa and the Middle East began organizing the International Students Association, or ISA.

About 60 students attended the meeting, led by group founder Amit Damani, to set the agenda for membership and planning events.

Damani, originally from Mumbai, India, said while international students belong to a variety of student groups, their many different perspectives on global issues could be better showcased through a united body.

“(Cultural groups) do a great job, but something is lacking,” the Weinberg sophomore said. “Traditionally we are grouped by our race or ethnicity. But our passports should not decide who should be in this group.”

The ISA is backed by the International Office, which helped Damani form the group after he proposed it in September.

International Office Director Ravi Shankar opened the meeting and emphasized that group can include any student, regardless of their background. The crowd contained American students, students on visas and students born overseas and raised in the US.

“This isn’t directed just at international students but at an entire body of students – anyone who is interested in international student issues,” Shankar said.

The group does not yet have a formal leadership, but international students like Jiang and Nishant Nagpal, also from Mumbai, have already joined with Damani to help set it up.

Jing is already the co-chairperson of the International Peer Mentor program, which pairs international students to ease the transition to life at NU. She said she hopes to eventually merge that group into the ISA.

“We have a Chinese students association and an Indian students association, but we have never brought people together,” Jing said. “Amit (Damani) proposed it, and now we’re creating the group together.”

During the meeting, Jing and Damani discussed possible events for the group, including an international film, food and music festival, and an orientation for international freshmen in the fall of 2008.

“It’s like creating a sense of home for students on campus,” Damani said. “It also has a sense of ‘I’ve never been to the Middle East, so let me get a taste of it.'”

If the ISA can bring together American and international students, it would make the group an asset to Northwestern, said Elizabeth Matthews, associate director of the International Office. Matthews said there are approximately 2,000 international students at NU, and about 600 of them are undergraduates. Despite the larger number of international graduate students, the crowd at the meeting consisted almost entirely of undergraduates.

One student in the crowd, Weinberg sophomore Roshan Karingada, said the new group could help foreign students adjust to a new city and a new school.

“You come here and you are kind of lost,” the student said. “It’s natural for students on their first year to identify with someone with their own heritage … It’s true even for students who have spent a lot of their lives in the United States.”

The next step for the group, Damani said, is to build the organization up to meet ASG standards and become officially recognized as a student group.

A previous version of this story inaccurately described Roshan Karingada’s residency status. The Daily regrets the error. 

Matt Radler can be reached at [email protected]