Study Abroad Can Find World of Peril
MINNEAPOLIS - Rachel Jamison traveled to Tanzania last August as the sole University of Minnesota student in an exchange program with the University of Dar es Salaam. Her year, she said, became a nightmare.
She was sexually harassed by a campus guard and a policeman, and assaulted on the street. A man in the office where she had to officially register for classes asked for "a date" first, which she called a synonym for sex. Then a classmate stole her finals papers, demanding sex before he would give them back.
Jamison thought she knew the risks when she went. "But I realized this was very different," she said.
More American college students are studying abroad, more often in countries where cultural attitudes and laws may be very different. And that's raising the stakes for the colleges sending them.
"I have a lot of gray hair from worry as students go abroad," said Al Balkcum, director of the University of Minnesota's Learning Abroad Center.
In 2004-05, more than 205,000 American college students traveled overseas for study programs, an increase of 8 percent over the year before. While the most popular destinations remain European countries - the top three were the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain - other places are rising in popularity. The number of Americans studying in the United Kingdom dropped in 2004-05; the number of students going to such places as Argentina and India leaped by 50 percent.
Balkcum said the school is responsible for students in approved programs no matter where in the world they are. When they find out about it, schools have a duty to respond to sexual harassment of students studying abroad. But students also have to use the training and contacts they've been given. "When students are 10,000 miles away, we can't tell what's happening every moment," Balkcum said. "We rely on what the student tells us and what the on-site coordinator tells us."
It's not hard to find tragic tales of what can happen to American students overseas. In 1996, four students died when the bus in which they were riding veered off an Indian road on the way to the Taj Mahal. Two years later, five women from a Maryland college were raped on an isolated highway in Guatemala. In 2003, two students drowned after they went wading in a Puerto Rican stream and apparently were pulled under by the current.
Colleges are probably better than they've ever been at handling overseas emergencies and issues, said Patrick Quade, interim director of international education at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn. Quade is the retired director of such programs at the St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., which sends more students abroad to study than any four-year undergraduate college in the country.
He tells parents that in campus-managed overseas programs, students are usually safer than they would be in a major American city. The biggest single threat to students abroad is their use of alcohol, he said. Another one is what he calls "their Americanness." Leave the provocative T-shirts at home, he said. Respect the culture and immerse yourself in it. Don't think you can change the other country, and don't try. Listen.
Programs where students go off by themselves are tougher, he said. Roughly 250 Gustavus students went abroad during January break, about 23 of those in programs where they'd be independent. Quade said no to a couple of proposed trips, including one from a student who wanted to climb mountains but had little experience doing so.
But a trip by a girl who wanted to go to a South African nature reserve to work with chimpanzees was approved. She was required to specify her exact destination, have a 24-hour emergency contact, have a medical program and housing, and find someone who agreed in writing to look out for her while she was there.
Campus officials say that they cannot discuss Jamison's case because she hasn't given them permission to do that, but that students who went before her didn't complain of problems. Balkcum said that Jamison's orientation would have included information on everything from Tanzania's socio-political circumstances to a briefing on the University of Dar es Salaam and discussion of health and safety issues.
Jamison said that though she talked with University of Minnesota students who had been in the Tanzanian program and knew there would be harassment, she "never heard sexual harassment mentioned at all" by the University of Minnesota. She is 6 feet tall and has long blonde hair and said that attracted attention in Dar es Salaam.
The University of Minnesota had a designated contact on the campus, but Jamison said she was uncomfortable working with that office because a man there had inquired about her sexual habits. She said she didn't contact the University of Minnesota about her situation until the end of January, six months into her time in Africa, because that was when it became clear she would not be able to officially register or get her missing papers back.
Jamison wasn't happy with the speed or quality of their responses. In February, she decided to come home without grades or a transcript. Though she had fulfilled credit requirements for a bachelor's degree in history before she left for Africa, she found that her diploma was at risk and she owed thousands of dollars on her unfulfilled scholarship.
Last week, she said, University of Minnesota officials informed her that they would award her a diploma in May and that she would not have to repay the scholarship.
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© 2007, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
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