WKSU Stories

Kent State, College of Wooster Take Action Against New Requirement for International Students

Ideastream Public Media | By Abigail Bottar

Published July 10, 2020 at 6:22 PM EDT

The university and the American Association of University Professors Kent chapter utilized a fact finder's assistance in coming to a contract agreement.

This week the Trump administration announced that international students must take an in person class in the fall, or they will have to leave the United States.

This would affect 1,409 international students at Kent State University, including Jinkal Patel. Originally from India, Patel has been in the U.S. since 2016 and is supposed to graduate this December with a double major in marketing and business management.

She received an email from Kent State’s office of International Students and Scholars Services with guidance.

“We have to talk with our advisor before July 15 in order to maintain a status, so that they would help us out with some other elective, so they would have something change in our schedule, like I’d probably have to take another class.”

In a Facebook Live on Thursday (watch below), Sonia A. Alemagno, dean of the college of Public Health, announced that all international students in her college will be allowed to remain in the United States, as the advisors in the college of Public Health had worked with all international students to ensure they would be compliant under the new regulations. All other colleges are working with their international students in a similar one- on-one approach with the goal of enrolling them all in an in person class in their area of study.

This week, the College of Wooster joined Harvard and MIT in a lawsuit against the new regulations. Kent State University President Todd Diacon has written a letter to Ohio's congressional delegation asking them to "contact the Department of Homeland Security and ask that they reconsider these new restrictions and urge them to return to the existing flexibilities granted to colleges and universities due to the COVID-19 pandemic." Diacon says the new regulations could devastate the university's international enrollment as well as student safety. He points out that the 1,409 international students enrolled at Kent State represent 99 countries and include 12 international Fulbright Scholars funded by the U.S. Department of State.