Student Life Multimedia Editor Jaden Satenstein explores the experiences of Washington University community members as the school prepares to open for a fall semester like no other. This three-part series focuses on first-years, international students and faculty members as we lead up to the start of classes.

When Washington University transitioned to online instruction in March, international students scrambled to figure out their next move. Some successfully petitioned to stay on campus. Some flew straight home. Some stayed with friends. But all that we spoke with said they feared how their international status would affect them come fall.

Graphic by HN Hoffmann and Christine Watridge

The transcript of the episode can be found below. It has been lightly edited for clarity:

HELEN WEBLEY-BROWN (0:09-0:18): I think my first initial thought right when we got the very first email saying, “Don’t come back to campus,” was thinking, like, “How am I going to afford my flight back?”

JADEN SATENSTEIN (0:26-1:02): I’m Multimedia Editor Jaden Satenstein, and you’re listening to Reopening, a Student Life audio series exploring the experiences of Washington University community members as the school prepares to open for an unprecedented fall semester.

Today, we hear from international students.

Junior Helen Webley-Brown was headed back to St. Louis on Wednesday, March 11 after spending the first part of spring break at her suitemate’s home in Los Angeles, California. As her suitemate’s mother drove her to the airport, Webley-Brown received Chancellor Andrew Martin’s email saying that the Danforth Campus was shutting down.

HWB (1:03-1:08): And I just kind of got the email, read it, and I was like, “You know, I don’t think I should be boarding that plane right now.”

JS (1:09-1:17): Webley-Brown didn’t get on the plane. Back at her suitemate’s house, she deliberated: Fly to her home in London, England or try to stay in the country?

HWB (1:18-1:34): I didn’t know for sure if I wanted to go back home, just because of obviously the difficulties that I imagined I would experience trying to get back into the country, but I decided that, because I could go home, I probably should take the opportunity to do so.

JS (1:35-2:05): Luckily, Webley-Brown said her suitemate’s family was able to purchase her a ticket, and by the end of the weekend she was back in London. But those concerns over whether or not she could return to the United States only grew as time went on. She planned to come back for the fall and already signed an off-campus apartment lease, but a July 6 directive from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, only worsened the uncertainty and stress international students faced.

Office of International Students and Scholars Associate Director Martha Turner explained.

MARTHA TURNER (2:06-2:35): If the whole school went online, then students would have to leave the country immediately or be potentially deported. Again, very upsetting. And you know, one couldn’t comprehend how you could make a rule that, no matter what a student did, they couldn’t keep themselves legal through no fault of their own, so that was really a horrific time.

JS (2:36-3:14): Turner and her colleagues immediately wrote to international students telling them they were working to figure out how the new policies may affect them. Three days later, on July 9, Martin and Provost Beverly Wendland sent an email to the University community expressing the school’s support for international students and commitment to providing a hybrid format of instruction this fall. The email also said that Washington University had joined other schools in preparing an amicus brief in support of a Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology lawsuit challenging the policy.

To junior Will Wang from Shanghai, China, the University’s emails have been clear and supportive of international students.

WILL WANG (3:15-3:33): Wash. U. has been responsive and quick in reacting to the new changes in law and, yeah, basically the new changes, and I feel that they are caring for students and are responsible for those changes, yeah.

JS (3:34-3:42): But, for Webley-Brown, those three days of silence from Martin and the administration before responding to the ICE announcement spoke louder than what was said in the email.

HWB (3:43-4:01): I can understand wanting to take your time to make decisions, and in some circumstances, it’s good for you to do that, but I’m thinking like when the directive comes out, I wanted, you know, two hours after that, I wanted Wash. U. to just say, “We stand behind our international students.” It could have been a small, simple message like that and it would have done a world of good.

JS (4:02-4:09): Fortunately, ICE rescinded the policy less than a week later, which Turner said greatly improved the situation for international students.

MT (4:10-4:45): All students, even some of the new students who are required to take at least one in-person course, are protected. If the university goes fully online, nobody is subject to deportation. So I think it was a roller coaster, a terrifying roller coaster, but when the roller coaster ride was done, regulations might not be perfect, but they were much closer to something that students found reasonable.

JS (4:46-4:57): But the revised guidelines haven’t eased all concerns. Senior John Ge from Nanjing, China is living in non-University housing off-campus, but he worries about future directives disrupting that plan.

JOHN GE (4:58-5:13): To me, at least, I feel like in the fall semester there’s still that possibility that there might be something new coming out which is gonna threaten the legal status of us international students staying here, so that’s been something behind my mind, at least, yeah.

JS (5:14-5:25): Junior Rachit Jain from Chennai, India also worries about housing. He successfully requested to live in a Residential Life-managed apartment off-campus. Still, he fears a University shut-down could displace him.

RACHIT JAIN (5:26-5:37): Just don’t kick us out. That’s, that’s what I ask. And just a little bit of stability is what I need. If they maintain the status quo, great. Just don’t kick us out with two days of notice.

JS (5:38-5:52): But some international students aren’t coming back this fall. When senior Yiran Cheng moved out of his off-campus apartment in the spring to travel back home to Beijing, China, he was forced to wear a protective suit on the plane and quarantine in a hotel for 14 days upon arrival.

YIRAN CHENG (5:53-6:10): The only person I saw was the nurse who’d come to take my temperature twice a day. Yeah, the solitude was starting to get to me at around the end of the quarantine, but thankfully I made it through.

JS (6:11-6:20): Cheng doesn’t want to go through that again. Under current United States government policy, students traveling from China must first spend 14 days in another country before entering the US.

YC (6:21-6:41): If somehow a flight connection went south or something, I would get trapped in somewhere I know basically nothing about, and I just don’t want to face that kind of situation, so I decided to just at least stay in China for the fall.

JS (6:42-6:50): Junior Elaine Soh from Singapore hoped to come back to campus this fall. But, as time went on, she became far less optimistic.

ELAINE SOH (6:51-7:17): I would just open social media and see people that I knew going to parties or not social distancing and kind of have that hope diminished, the hope of returning diminished. Just because that, coupled with what I’ve been hearing in the news, kind of cultivated this inherent distrust that I have, where like college students being back on campus… So I was a lot more pessimistic about the situation getting better.

JS (7:18-7:24): But Soh said she never really considered taking online classes from home this fall because of her experience with synchronous Zoom classes in the spring.

ES (7:25-7:43): So, I basically was staying up to like 4 a.m. some days for school and then some other days I would go to sleep at 2 a.m. and then wake up at 6 a.m. for my next class, so it was really irregular kind of sleeping schedules, which I felt like was not the best learning situation for me.

JS (7:44-8:07): This fall, Soh is studying at Yale-NUS College, a liberal arts college established by Yale University and the National University of Singapore, as a form of study abroad. Because of the less severe spread of COVID-19 in Singapore, Soh will spend the semester taking in-person classes. Since she’s still paying Washington University tuition, she’ll retain her F-1 Visa status and earn credits towards graduation.

ES (8:08-8:35): My family’s here, so I knew that, if I had any health complications, I would have support and have the necessary help that I would need. And then also coupled with the fact that Yale-NUS does in-person classes, which I think really is what I want to go to college for, to be able to have open discourse in the classroom.

JS (8:36-8:47): While the international students we spoke with have been able to navigate the obstacles they’ve faced to solidify their plans for the fall, these past few months have taken a significant mental toll on some, like Webley-Brown.

HWB (8:48-9:05): It’s hard because you spend, I guess at that point it’d been two years, living in a different country, I pay taxes in this country, kind of trying to build a different life here, and then you kind of realize how quickly it can be taken away.

JS (9:06-9:17): Although Webley-Brown was strongly considering staying in the U.S. after graduating, that ICE announcement made her feel she’d be treated better in other places. Jain is also rethinking his plans.

RJ (9:18-9:32): Earlier I was hoping to go to grad school in the US as well, but right now I might be reconsidering that decision depending on how the crisis and future crises are handled. I may be going to other countries for grad school. That’s how it is.

JS (9:34-9:43): Coming up on Reopening, we speak to faculty members about their experiences planning for a hybrid semester, like Drama professor and Beyond Boundaries program director Robert Mark Morgan.

ROBERT MARK MORGAN (9:46-10:02): You know, I used to wake up from a nightmare. You know, like you have a nightmare and you wake up and you’re like, ‘Whew, good thing that was a nightmare.’ And now I kind of wake up into the nightmare. I’m like, ‘Oh wait, it’s another day during a global pandemic that we need to, you know, be on guard.’

JS (10:03-10:06): For Student Life media, I’m Jaden Satenstein.

“Reopening, Part 2: International students face obstacles” can also be found on Apple Podcasts and Soundcloud.