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Student Association has introduced an International Student Concerns Committee with hopes of providing international students a stronger voice on campus.

The committee, which held its first meeting last week, formed partly in response to the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as anti-Asian hate incidents on Syracuse University’s campus.

A white man shot and killed eight people — Hyun Jung Grant, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim, Delaina Ashley Yaun and Soon Chung Park — in three spas in Atlanta on March 16. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent.

The campus community has also experienced anti-Asian hate recently. Notes containing racist language targeting Chinese students were found in at least three SU buildings on March 11, and on Feb. 28, two people reportedly used anti-Asian language toward a student.

Mariah Schwambach Franca, a freshman chemistry major from Brazil and the co-chair of the committee, said she hopes to make international students feel more safe on campus.

“Ever since I joined SA, my main goal was to give voice to all international students and represent them and represent us,” Franca said. “With the committee, I can fulfill my goals in a more direct way and listen to what they go through and what they experience.”

Franca also hopes to create a support system for international students through SA, especially if college is their first time in the United States.

“Especially with international students, we are all away from home and away from our families,” Franca said. “For some people, this is their first experience living in the U.S. or actually being in the U.S. I wanted to help with this tradition with the culture shock.”

Franca said she knows that some international students simply want to feel like they belong at SU while staying connected to their culture. When Franca first came to the U.S. from Brazil, she was surprised by how different the culture was.

In her role with the committee, she’s hoping to plan a five-day International Cultural Fair that will highlight different continents each day.

“Sometimes you just feel homesick, and you need someone with a culture more similar to yours,” Franca said. “Sometimes people just want something that feels like home.”

By educating others about different cultures on campus, Franca hopes to limit discrimination or hate that international students may be experiencing.

Ze Zeng, a sophomore majoring in finance and supply chain management from Beijing, China, is the other co-chair of the committee. He said that highlighting international student concerns on campus allows SU to grow and become more culturally diverse over time.

“The school has started to pay attention to international student concerns with food, with culture, with different traditions, and we’re moving forward to make school become a more diverse place,” Zeng said. “This is what our committee wants to do — to keep pushing, using SA as a platform to work with different offices and organizations, to push these kinds of events to make it more culturally diverse.”

Published on April 11, 2021 at 9:44 pm