In the basement of a Harvard dorm on a recent chilly morning, the smoky scent of barbecue filled the air as the Undergraduate Brazilian Association gathered for a meeting. It was a rare moment of relief during a tense semester, capped by the university’s controversial decision to deny winter housing to hundreds of international students.
Harvard reversed its decision after public outcry and a student-led petition that got more than 300 signatures.
“Honestly, I feel like that should’ve been their decision in the first place,” said João Frazão, a junior from Rio de Janeiro, standing outside his dorm room. “The dorms are right here. They don’t feed you [during winter break]. They don’t clean anything. It’s just about having your ID work — and if it doesn’t, you have nowhere to go.”
For Frazão and other low- and middle-income international students at Harvard who work on campus for their housing, the initial decision left them scrambling to find temporary places to stay or paying for expensive flights home.
While the eventual reversal was a win for students, the process came with a backlash. Frazão and others received dozens of hostile messages online.
“The craziest one was, ‘Go sleep in a parking lot, maybe someone will toss a coin at you,’” said Frazão, scrolling through hateful comments accusing him and others of being “illegals” who should “go back to your country.”
Harvard apologized to students in an email, calling the initial winter housing denials “a misunderstanding.” A university spokesperson declined to make anyone available for an interview for this story but in an email noted that international students receiving financial aid are eligible for travel stipends.
A climate of anxiety
The housing mix-up revealed broader concerns gripping international students as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to begin his second term.
During his first term, Trump’s hard-line immigration policies — including a travel ban targeting several majority-Muslim countries and tighter visa scrutiny for Chinese students — contributed to a 12% drop in international student enrollment at U.S. colleges. In 2020, his administration proposed a controversial rule requiring international students to attend in-person classes during the pandemic or risk deportation. The administration later rescinded that policy.
This summer during Trump’s re-election campaign, he again promised measures targeting international students.
“When I’m president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals,” Trump declared during a campaign stop in New Jersey. “If you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you. You’ll be out of that school.”
Now some schools, including UMass Amherst, MIT and Wesleyan, are advising international students traveling for winter break that they may want to return to the U.S. before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which happens to be the same day as Trump’s inauguration.
On Monday afternoon, Harvard administrators sent another email to students, advising those who share concerns about situations that would disrupt or delay their return from winter break to “budget time ahead of the semester start.”
International students are a key part of the American higher education ecosystem. Last year, despite the political and social climate, U.S. colleges enrolled a record 1.1 million international students, according to the Institute of International Education.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said these students enrich campus culture and the economy.
“It’s kind of a brain sweep, in which American institutions bring the best and brightest from other countries to our shores,” Mitchell told GBH’s podcast College Uncovered. “Immigrants bring intellectual capacity, richness, eagerness and a can-do attitude to the country that we need to build — not stifle.”
A ‘clear disconnect’ on campus
Despite reassurances from some college leaders, students remain anxious.
“There’s a clear disconnect,” said associate professor Gerardo Blanco, director of Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education.
Blanco said administrators have yet to see evidence of a change in policy, so they’re reminding international students that “this is not a time to panic.” Meanwhile, he knows that sentiment is not mirrored in many student groups.
“So we need to find more common ground between both groups,” he said.
To bridge that gap, Blanco said colleges should listen more closely to young students’ anxieties, which often percolate up though social media platforms like TikTok, WeChat and WhatsApp — spaces where older administrators often spend less time and may miss the pulse of conversations.
For Ian Toyota, a Harvard sophomore from a small village in Kenya, the housing mix-up and online backlash added stress to an already difficult semester.
Toyota, who supports his family in Kenya by working as a campus tour manager in Cambridge, said on such short notice he couldn’t afford a flight home.
“That’s the only thing I could think about for days,” he said, drinking chai in the student center and recalling the moment he received an email denying his appeal for winter housing. “It’s very hard to reach the housing office.”
Toyota recommended that Harvard simplify its bureaucracy and improve its communication with international students to ease their anxiety in this highly charged social and political moment.
Then, Toyota braced against the cold as he stepped outside, unlocked his bike and pedaled back to work.
Copyright 2024 WGBH Radio
This story was originally published by WGBH. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
