Early last month, international students were surprised to hear that they would be responsible for another fee next year. Without consulting students, and with so little notice that the university now claims it is too late to reverse the decision, International Student Services announced that it will begin charging international students an extra fee of $125 a year to cover the federally mandated Student and Exchange Visitor System. While SEVIS must be implemented one way or another, the university has seriously dropped the ball in its clumsy attempts to pass the costs directly to students. An while we can debate the relative worth or injustice of SEVIS itself, it is our more immediate duty to oppose the fee, which is neither necessary nor fair. Not only was the decision to make international students pay for a system meant to track their movements in the name of homeland security opaque and unexpected, the policy itself is discriminatory, hypocritical and antithetic to the best ideals of the University of Wisconsin.
The first problem with UW's plan for funding SEVIS is that it singles out international students unfairly by insisting that they bear the brunt of the cost. While UW officials hide behind the flimsy claim that SEVIS is a \service"" directed at international students, it remains clear that if SEVIS is a service for any group at all on this campus, it is certainly not international students. All international students stand to gain from SEVIS is increased risk of deportation if they engage in such suspicious activities as dropping a class. SEVIS is not a service for international students, it is a service to the federal government intended to aid them in tracking those international students.
And even if SEVIS was a service benefitting international students, targeting them alone for funding would run counter to UW's typical approach for funding targeted services. In most cases such services are supported by funds from the whole community of students. Students with learning disabilities, for instance, do not pay an extra fee each year for the existence of the McBurney Center.
Making a policy of targeting international students stands in contradiction to some of the best ideals for which the university is supposed to stand. UW administrators talk of inclusion, yet they consciously institute a policy that can only make a significant population of students feel singled out and excluded. They talk of diversity, yet they consciously handicap a large portion of students that bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives to campus. If UW truly aspires to be a campus that fosters diversity, placing the costs of SEVIS on international students alone is a step in the wrong direction.
Making international students bear the cost of SEVIS is contrary to our basic sense of justice for all these reasons, and we hope that the UW administration will adjust its policy to cover the cost of SEVIS, whether through general funds or segregated fees. If by the entire student body, the cost will be negligible. Failing that, we hope to see the student body-not just international students-demand a more fair system.
International students are an absolutely vital part of this community, and too often they encounter misunderstanding and discrimination, in addition to the other difficulties of living far from home. And because they make up a large percentage of graduate students, they participate in much of the work and research on which the prestige of this university rests. The least we can do is help defend them from such systematic discrimination.
