(MCT) 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 police officer and assaulted on the street. A man in the office where she had to officially register for courses asked for a date, which she said was 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, often in countries where cultural attitudes and laws might be very different. And that is raising the stakes for the colleges sending them.
“I have a lot of gray hair from worry as students go abroad,” said Al Balkcum, U-M’s Learning Abroad Center director.
From 2004–05, more than 205,000 American college students traveled overseas for study abroad programs, an increase of 8 percent from the year before. While the most popular destinations remain European countries—the top three were the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain—other destinations are rising in popularity. The number of Americans studying in the U.K. dropped during 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 have 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.”
Colleges are probably better than they have ever been at handling overseas emergencies and issues, said Patrick Quade, international education interim director 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 threat to students abroad is their alcohol use, 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. Listen. Do not think you can change the other country and do not try.
© 2007 Star Tribune
