International Education Week (IEW), a global tradition, would be celebrating its 50th anniversary at SRU, but has been canceled due to budget cuts for the International Dinner. It will likely still occur in the spring.
Monetary restrictions would have required the Office for Global Engagement (OGE) and SRU International Club, a student-run group, to choose which countries to represent through food.
“It wouldn’t actually celebrate the international students, and that’s the main point of what we’re trying to do here,” the International Club vice president, Vasundhara Devi Singari, said.
The OGE decided to cancel the dinner altogether, with the International Club choosing to cancel the whole week as a statement.
“It would have been a major restriction that would have impacted the quality of the whole dinner,” Hannah-Leticia Baur, the International Club activities coordinator, said. “Some dishes are not halal, or some people are vegetarian…it’s an impossible task to say the East Asian dish is more important than the European vegetarian dish.”
OGE informed the International Club of the dinner’s status on Oct. 18, less than three weeks before the celebration was set to occur.
According to Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael Zieg, he learned about the budgetary restrictions 1-2 days earlier and immediately shared it with OGE.
“Within a day, I had tried to come up with a way to salvage the situation and to be able to let the dinner go on. When I communicated that and they discussed it, they decided that wouldn’t meet their needs,” Zieg said.
“The way the dinner was held was of greater importance to them than I had expected. I was looking for a way to have a dinner, and they were much more interested in having the dinner the way they had envisioned it. And so I had misunderstood that,” he said.
The International Club announced its decision to cancel the entire week on Oct. 25. The week would have included an international sports event, a fashion show, a sampling of coffee from around the world, a roundtable discussion and other educational events.
“We wanted to make a statement…we were scared if we have all the other events still going on, that less attention would be placed on the fact that the dinner was actually canceled…it’s gonna be a kind of radical decision,” Baur said.
The 50th anniversary dinner was set to occur on Nov. 9 of this year. Event planning began at least six months ago, according to the International Club.
“Our problem is not that there [were] budget cuts or anything. We just have a problem that they informed us so late when we did the promotions, the planning,” Singari said.
She also said this decision affects more than just international students. Multiple departments, offices and student organizations were planning to collaborate on IEW events.
“There’s a lot of faculty members that are international as well…there’s a lot of students here that are domestic, but have international backgrounds that were definitely looking forward to celebrating this event. It’s just really sad, and makes everybody just feel underrepresented and unwelcome, almost,” she said.
The dinner itself is meant for both students and faculty to cook and share a dish from their culture(s). Last year, the event sold out 250 tickets to students, faculty and alumni.
“The dinner is like the grand finale, and we didn’t think it was honoring the international students as it normally does,” Singari said. Everybody was looking forward to the dinner, we’ve been planning it since last semester…There’s alum that got tickets for it, even people that are not in the state.”
Baur said the International Dinner has been an opportunity for her to share a piece of her home culture with the campus.
“I [felt] undervalued and not able to represent myself,” Baur said. “A lot of students here on campus are not able to leave this country…but the dinner really gives them an opportunity to experience different cultures.”
Though attendees have historically deemed the meal successful, Zeig said, “the anticipated revenue and expenses were way out of alignment.”
The ticketing process also changed this year, providing another source of difficulty. This combined with the imbalanced budget led Zieg to communicate the constraints with OGE.
“We also have a responsibility to use the tuition that students pay in a responsible way, so we’re trying to find a way to do both of those at once—to be responsible stewards and to celebrate the cultural enrichment of international education,” Zeig said.
Baur and Singari met with both Zieg and President Riley to discuss the situation. This occurred after the two emailed administration regarding the importance of the event.
“SRU’s core values are community and belonging, engagement and transformation,” Baur said. “The events and also the dinner, they would have aligned with all of these core values and also promoted diversity on a campus that is predominantly white, so it would have really benefited this community.”
A similar celebration is now being planned for spring. Zieg said that while the event will “miss the window” of IEW, it will still be valuable to the SRU community.
“[They] have more time so they could plan it out and have it more in line with their vision,” Zieg said. “I’ve heard from many of them the disappointment that they feel, and I share that so I am very happy that we will be able to do this in the spring.”
He agreed the event aligns well with the university’s core mission.
“The university definitely does value international education,” he said. “ I appreciate the work that [OGE] does to support our students…It’s an important thing to be able to recognize all that international students, international travel adds to the experience of being an SRU student.”
