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?

“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?

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.

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!

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. 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.

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.

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.

There’s no such thing as a dived between internationals and British students in this university, despite Nouse’s hard work.

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.

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.