Induction lecture brands home students as ‘lazy and unhelpful’
Home students are “lazy”, “unhelpful” and “only interested in going to the bar” according to a welcome lecture given to overseas students by the University.
In the lecture, overseas students were told that home students “might make no effort to speak to you” and “might not give you time to reply.”
Students and student groups have united in condemnation of the perceived racial stereotyping, labelling it “inappropriate”, “unhelpful and grossly unfair.”
Adam Malik, President of the International Students Association, described the lecture as “trying to isolate international students and giving certain preconceptions about home students.”
He went on to say that he “could easily see it as racist”. Malik condemned the University for failing in its primary concern to “integrate and to meet new people”, saying that its actions “definitely deter integration between international students and home students.”
YUSU have also criticised the lecture, stating that it is “vehemently opposed to stereotyping, whether aimed at ethnic minority students, or home students.” John Apea and Nadia Aziz, YUSU Racial Equality Officers, commented that the content is “inappropriate in any context” and that “integration and cohesion should be primary aims of the University and International Office and unfortunately these statements may impede this process.”
The lecture concerned took place as part of a series of induction talks for overseas students in orientation week, and was organised and run by the Student Support Service.
In response to the accusations, Student Support Services Manager Steve Page, commented that he believes many home students “may not be sensitive to or interested in [cultural] differences”. He argues that professionals who “have undertaken extensive research into the experience of international students here at York” make these speeches and presentations and they are based on the experience of previous students.
Page added that some members of staff do not give “much consideration” to the needs of international students who are from “very different educational cultures to that in the UK”.
Pancee Shoukry, a first-year Media Technology student from Kuwait, was “made to feel uncomfortable” by the speeches, which gave her the impression that British people wouldn’t want to speak to her.
Other international students stated that they were told that “British people loved to drink” and warned that people “might try to pressure [them] into drinking”. One student was told; “don’t expect [home students] to be friendly towards you” although they may “eventually warm up towards you”.
The ISA stated that giving this sort of information to new students is not only irresponsible but also “has the adverse affect of isolating students from each other. It’s not helpful at all.”
For many international students orientation week will be their first experience of Britain. According to Malik the University is creating preconceptions that are “unfair to home students”.
One first-year international student said “many international students don’t know what to expect at first” and for many the speeches “could have been interpreted to be racist.”
In response to students’ accounts, Page stated: “I am saddened to be told that a number of students have said that they felt uncomfortable and in some cases scared of talking to home students because of this material.”
Students who require support regarding this issue have been asked to contact acwelf@yusu.org, or to comment or provide feedback on presentations contact international-support@york.ac.uk.
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ermm, isn’t this the newspaper that featured a front-page article accusing international students of being 250% more likely to be cheating in exams? Stereotyping doesn’t feel good after all now, does it?
anonymous, your research isn’t very accurate…
I think you’ll find if you actually read nouse’s article, that it was using that 250 figure to accuse the university of not doing enough to support international students in academic matters,not saying that they cheat more.
I think Nouse has actually been supportive of international students in this article.
First of all, concerning last year’s article, it really doesn’t matter who was to blame according to Nouse.
Would it be ok if the slide here included an explanation of the stereotypes? You know, with some statistics about binge drinking and a disclaimer accusing the ills of society and the powers that be. Don’t think so.
What matters is that:
a) last year, Nouse used a tiny sample of academic tribunals to portray all international students (that’s right, all two thousand of them, from a hundred different nations) as having a considerable tendency towards academic dishonesty. Dunno what you think, but perhaps it was something in the way it was phrased, with giant letters in the front cover shouting “International students 250% more likely to cheat in exams”, that didn’t really feel right.
b) now we hear it moan about unproductive branding, generalisations and stereotypes.
Double standards anyone?
Incidentally, the slide here is from a presentation made by an ENGLISH PERSON and it is obviously taken completely out of context, as anybody who actually attended the talk would have told you….
Look don’t get me wrong, I realise that not many interesting things happen in York, but frankly you can’t just create issues out of nothing. There’s a difference between reporting and sensationalist libel, and this is well into the realms of the latter.
“International students 250% more likely to cheat in exams”
That’s not what the headline was. It was, in fact “Overseas students face disproportionately more academic tribunals”, with the figure 250% in large text above it. Yes, there was a typo in the article as the statistics were 250% *as* likely, not more likely which was regrettable.
* last year, Nouse used a tiny sample of academic tribunals
No, we considered every single academic tribunal to come to that figure. The fact that 20% of all academic tribunals are of international students (which only represent 8% of students) is significant and it would be stupid to ignore it.
As Colin said, the tone of the article was very much that the University needs to take more responsibility to get rid of this disparity.
* Incidentally, the slide here is from a presentation made by an ENGLISH PERSON and it is obviously taken completely out of context, as anybody who actually attended the talk would have told you
Did you read the article? We explained the context, and even gave a quote from *someone at the talks*
What I heard is that no-one who attended the lecture felt uncomfortable by this slide. What Nouse did was to take a slide completely out of context, and, once again, create a sensationalistic article out of nothing. What the presenter said while presenting this particular slide was “If you are an international, you may think that…”
It was in no way meant to discriminate against home students, and Nouse’s article is way out of order. In my opinion, it should no longer be regarded as a student newspaper, but as a student tabloid. And as as Anonymous said, it does seems a hypocrisy for Nouse to cry out loud against stereotypes.
Alright, so the article was blaming the university, not the students… as the previous anonymous stated already, it would then be fine if the slide was something like:
“Home students do drink more, are indeed unfriendly and cold, but it is not their fault – blame society and centuries of an imperialistic mindset for it”.
Seriously?!
That’s not true. The SNRCs annual published statistics (the ‘Fact Monkey’ campaign) show that it’s actually the opposite of that – the majority of students at this Uni (75%) do not binge drink.
Chris, you are wrong. The title in the frontpage was exactly what I said, it has just been changed for the electronic version.
You used ALL academic tribunals. All 12 of them? And you found out that there were a couple more international students in there than statistics would have expected?
That’s a very solid reason to accuse intenational students of being dishonest candidates isn’t it? You raise an accusatory finger against 2000 people from 100 different nations and you brand them as potential cheaters from an extremely small number of cases.
That’s what I meant by a tiny sample. And that’s what “generalising” and “unproductive branding” really means.
Also, about this slide; perhaps it’d be worth interviewing more than one person.. And hearing the other side of the story..
and btw, international students represent 19% of the population in this university. There are 2000 of us here… so there goes your story my friend..
Maybe so, but the majority of internationals do not cheat either. Would it be perfectly legitimate if the slide stated that
“home students are 250% more [excuse me, "as"] likely to drink to be heavy drinkers than internationals”?
Chris, you are wrong. The title in the frontpage was exactly what I said, it has just been changed for the electronic version.
You used ALL academic tribunals. All 12 of them? And you found out that there were a couple more international students in there than statistics would have expected?
That’s a very solid reason to accuse intenational students of being dishonest candidates isn’t it? You raise an accusatory finger against 2000 people from 100 different nations and you brand them as potential cheaters from an extremely small number of cases.
That’s what I meant by a tiny sample. And that’s what “generalising” and “unproductive branding” really means.
Also, about this slide; perhaps it’d be worth interviewing more than one person.. And hearing the other side of the story..
There are actually only 693 overseas undergraduates at York (or at least in the last year statistics were published). – http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/po/stats/0607/summary.htm. The original article was only about undergraduate tribunals.
No-one honestly believes that all international students are cheats, and no-one ever said that, just that it was statistically more likely for that to be the case, presumably to highlight the case and get something done about it. Things happen after being on the front page of Nouse – in the recent case of arms investment, an ethical policy has been drawn up. I wasn’t involved in the paper when the first article went up so I don’t know if anything directly happened as a result.
It sounds like you honestly believe that every single British student is obsessed with drinking and binge drink, and you’re trying to justify that belief by saying that all home students believe all international students cheat.
Obviously I wasn’t in the talk, but how does branding British students as people who are cold to foreign students help anyone in any way?
“There are actually only 693 overseas undergraduates at York (or at least in the last year statistics were published)”
There are 2000 international students in this university.
An “international student” is anyone who does not come from the UK. An “overseas student” is somebody that comes from a nation outside of the EU.
You should at least get your numbers right next time to avoid coming up with such pointless statistics.
Okay, if we include EU students – 693 + 295. Where’s this 2000 coming from? You do realise the original article was only talking about undergraduates, right?
http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/phys/ugrad/applying/intstudents.htm
We do not believe that all home students are obsessed with drinking – all we are saying is that there is an exact parallel between internationals accusing british students for it, and british students accusing internationals of cheating.
Although, to be accurate, it was not home students who made such a claim, but Nouse.
In no way do I believe that one of these accusations justifies the other – they are both wrong, that’s the point. I am merely pointing out the irony in Nouse claiming that stereotyping is a bad thing. I am also accusing Nouse of trying to produce sensational articles, rather than clearly presenting an issue, as it happened.
That figure on the Physics website presumably includes postgrads, when the article from May only considered *undergrads*.
We are missing the point completely. A dozen cases are by no means enough to be branding foreign students like that, regardless of the pedantic details.
Equivalently, one could just find 50 binge-drinkers at Ziggy’s and be accusing home students for doing exactly what the slide above said.
We are either against “generalising” and “unproductive branding” in all its forms, or we are not. This kind of double standards from the part of Nouse is revolting.
I don’t think the point is being completely missed – the article did not claim all international students are cheats, and that’s certainly not what I got from it.
Secondly, the front page of a student newspaper is a lot less influential than a welcome talk from University officials.
And as for Nouse double-standards, the editorial team changes every year, each one bringing their own thoughts to the paper. Last year we were accused of being very left wing. This year, our news editor is a die-hard Conservative. It’s unfair to judge the newspaper year on year, and in fact is not relevant to the article in question.
anonymous2, it was also not international students who accused home students of anything. Let us remember that this slide was not made BY international students, and none of us believe what is said anyway.
There’s no such thing as a dived between internationals and British students in this university, despite Nouse’s hard work.
*divide
Nouse isn’t exclusively staffed by British students. In fact, the editor of the May edition isn’t British.
“the article did not claim all international students are cheats, and that’s certainly not what I got from it”
well neither did the slide. In fact, it quite explicitly says that home students MIGHT bla bla bla..
To put things straight; home students are not lazy alcoholics, international students are not anti-social lying cheats. Let’s get back to reality and put an end to all such hypocritical displays of political correctness.
I think that’s the most sensible thing said so far in these comments.
I’m glad we agree then. I hope that next time we will not have to spend so much time arguing over nothing. Cause that’s what both cases really where.
*were
Nouse stages an unnecessary drama about the opening lectures for foreign students in induction week. I didn’t think that these things needed explaining, apparently they do. Home students which feel offended should remind themselves what these lectures are about. It takes a lot of bad will to read racism into them.
In my opinion, the intention of the lectures was to open minds for the differences in culture, which international students necessarily encounter during their stay here. In fact, they do not state that home students are either ‘lazy’ or ‘unhelpful’ but that they may seem so to someone not used to British culture and to studying in England. The word ’seem’ implies in fact that this is not so, but that foreign students might perceive it so, as they are used to a entirely different studying environment. The word ’seem’ seems to have been overlooked by most critics. The slide shown on the title page is stating not stereotypes but problems foreign students might encounter, as Steve Page says in the tiny article below the main one. It is offering a help to be prepared for possible problems and to have thought about and questioned the assumptions one necessarily has when coming to a foreign country. Of course there are students who are unhelpful or lazy, but as a clear-thinking person I can assume that I encounter these in any university on earth, I don’t need an opening lecture for that. Being a foreign student, I actually thought that this would be the most unnecessary thing to say about these things, apparently it is not. Let me repeat it once more. Sentences beginning with “Home students are…” on which follows a stereotype are almost always wrong and nobody said them.
Yet, the problems which the slide states are there. As an international student one might – and the emphasis is on ‘might’ – encounter them. There is nothing racist in stating what might happen. They can be read as stereotypes, but only if you erase the ‘might’ in most of the sentences, thus if you are not careful in reading and if you want to read them as stereotypes. For example, people do talk in strong accents and it is sometimes hard to understand them; a foreign student should probably tell these people about his or her problem, but I can see that it takes a lot of self-confidence to do just that when you meet with a tutor or a student for the first time. Better to prepare yourself beforehand, better to think it over how you might react in such a situation than suffering through this extremely embarrassing situation unprepared. I will not talk about all these points on the slides, because if you start thinking along these lines, you might come up with some explanations for why these “accusations” are there. In how far would it help foreign students to pretend that these problems are not there?
I wonder how many of the students and organisations who protest so vehemently against this assumed racism have been studying or living in another culture, have in fact encountered the problem of seeing a culture from the outside whilst living the midst of it at the same time. It takes some time to adjust your thinking to the culture which surrounds you suddenly. It takes time to realise that it does not mean that students or staff are more lazy than at your home university, although it is strange that lectures start at 9 am only and not at 8 and that there are hardly any contact hours in some courses. Of course these are complex matters and cannot be grasped within a second, you have to understand the history of the country and the system which operates the country. It takes time to sink in that what you perceive is actually a different approach to life, which has its own right of existence. That maybe what you learn here is not only a different approach to learning and teaching. In my own humble point of view this is what the lectures were driving at.
Rather than accusing the Student Support Office of whose effort I am grateful for, home students should take these slides as a rough guideline of what could be problems when meeting a foreign student. I am sure most students already do know and do try. I meet a lot who are interested in cultural differences and make a huge effort to understand me, even though my culture, being a European one, is not so distant from the English as it must be for students from entirely different cultural backgrounds. Naturally, I also meet a lot who are not patient to hear me out when I stumble over a sentence; but I don’t want to know what reaction these get who yet are not as fluent as they wish to be. I can deal with it and I don’t take it personally because I have thought about these issues beforehand; because I know that when you are not in this situation, that when you are a home student, it is easy to forget that there actually are problems in communication. These problems MIGHT be not entirely based upon language skills or on the efforts of the foreign student alone, they can also involve cultural differences, of which many are sadly unaware of.
I never took these sentences as showing stereotypes and I would like to know who of the many people attending these lectures actually did. If you seek accusations you are sure to find them. So why do these few voices heard in Nouse jump onto this train of thought? Why was this drama staged? Aren’t there more pressing issues to write about, especially as this topic covers at least two pages? These are questions I would like to have answered. Finally, there is only one proper thing to do: to express my deepest gratitude to all those people and offices who work to make my stay in York worthwhile.
I think it is important to clarify the point of this article:
Nouse has at no point expressed an opinion on the arguments laid out in the article. Rather we have sought to represent the opinions of numerous students and organisations who feel that these issues need to be brought to the attention of the student body.
Although some international students may have had no issue with the orientation lectures, many others did, and this is an opinion which we feel needs to be expressed fairly.
I should also like to point out, in response to previous comments, that overseas students in this context refers only to undergraduate students.
I do not fully understand the accusations of hypocrisy or double-standards against Nouse in this comment forum. At no point in this article does Nouse accuse international students of being racist towards home students. Instead we present a stereotype which some students feel is enforced by the University.
Furthermore, previous articles published by this newspaper, particularly those relating to tribunals, are again accusing the University of unequal racial policy, not the student body.
Wht is there no comment from the person who created the slide and ave one of the lecutres? He’s said he’s happy to talk about it!
Sorry, duff keyboard and too much alcohol! Try again:
Why is there no comment from the person who created the slide and gave one of the lectures? He’s said he’s happy to talk about it!
“Nouse has at no point expressed an opinion on the arguments laid out in the article”
You have not expressed an opinion directly. You certainly have done so implicitly, through the way that you decided to portray (/create) this issue.
In fact, you have not even bothered to present the opinion of the other side, the one that the overwhelming majority of people who attended the talk actually had. Which was that the student support office was simply not trying to put labels on anyone.
At no point did the presenters suggest that ALL or MOST home students abide by a certain kind of behaviour. In fact, even in this slide (taken completely out of context) you can see that it explicitly says that some home students MIGHT ….
And keep in mind that this is still out of context.
So, to clear some things out, what the presenter actually said is that these are things that SOME PEOPLE MIGHT FEEL AT SOME POINT. He did not even imply that they are accurate or that people should ever believe them. As gitta said, the emphasis is clearly on MIGHT.
So, if we are not to purposely take it out of context, this is to be understood as ’students who just arrived in a completely foreign nation MIGHT sometimes feel that..’
And frankly, the whole point of those lectures is how you deal with settling in!
“Instead we present a stereotype which some students feel is enforced by the University”
By any standards, the presentation did NOT stereotype anyone.
I’m sorry but it is simply unreasonable to suggest that the trained professionals in the student support office are trying to enforce stereotypes.
It also insults the intelligence of international students to suggest that they unquestioningly buy whatever appears on a slide, without paying the slightest attention to what is actually being said.
If you cared more about FACTS than about creating issues out of nothing then you would have at least tried to understand (and explain) what the presenters were trying to say, and you would not be disrespecting their hard work and personal values in such a cheap way, just to make a provocative and eye-catching front cover.
Most international students would only have the best to say about the student support office; their work is vital and of the best quality, starting from orientation week (which pretty much everyone considers to be a very positive experience) all the way through university.
You also seem to be ignoring that quite a large number of people were offended by Nouse’s allegations last year. I’m speaking, of course, about the link that you tried to establish between international students and a high tendency towards cheating, which you came up with after extrapolating a dozen cases of academic tribunals to a large and very diverse part of our academic community.
So, on the one side, you are speaking of people getting offended over an issue that never existed before you decided to create it (about an event that took place 4 months ago). On the other side you are completely ignoring all the people that you have offended yourselves by your grossly generalising statements in your own front covers. Now that is double-standards.
“I do not fully understand the accusations of hypocrisy or double-standards against Nouse in this comment forum”
We can tell.
Thank you for this comment, anon.
“Instead we present a stereotype which some students feel is enforced by the University.”
I do have to repeat (obviously the News Editor has not read the comments very carefully) that there is no way in which these lectures deal with stereotypes. The issue created is artificially created. Can’t you see that the fuss made about these slides comments more on the mis-reader than on anything the Student Support office did?
gitta: My understanding is that this particular slide was presented in the context of perceptions international students might come across whilst at York, which would certainly suggest a stereotype is being suggested in these slides.
If this is not the case, in which context were the slides presented?
How does making the suggestions that British students are as above benefit anyone?
Nobody ever said that British student ARE like that only that one might perceive them as that. As I said, a student coming from a different culture might well perceive British students as lazy if he or she does not understand how the English education system works, if he or she does not understand that the British lecturers might have different goals in their teaching. FOr example, in my home university it is more important to learn facts rather than skills (which I think dubious at best), anyhow the approach is a different one, and maybe you can see that studying at whole is thus completely different. It might help you as a foreign student to be aware of these differences in approach. It also might help to be aware of your culturally influenced thinking and to question this.
I have forgotten what they said additionally at these lectures, but the context is certainly to show what problems one might encounter and to be vigilant in one’s thinking, and not to give up even if one is disappointed. Come on, it is an induction lecture – what do you think they tell us? That we shouldn’t come into contact with home students, that we should all think in stereotypes? Surely you can see how ridiculous this would be and that properly rather the opposite is the case. If I may be allowed to change the words of someone else earlier in this thread, this assumption is an insult to anyone’s inteligence.
the context in which this slide appeared has been explained in some detail on the above comments.