By: Emerald Maple

There’s a rather well-known fact circulating among the Residence Life community at Whitworth University: the percentage of international students who live in Stewart often disproportionately reflects the percentage of international students who live on campus.  

According to statistics provided by Krista Maroni, the director of Residence Life, in 2019, international students comprised 5% of the students in on-campus housing. That same year, Stewart was comprised of an international student population of 13%. In 2020, the percentages matched up with 3% of the on-campus community being international students and 3% of Stewart being international students. In 2021, the percentage of international students on campus and in Stewart matched the statistics from 2019. This year, Stewart is closed, rendering it impossible to include statistics from 2022.  

Not only is Stewart a hall that has a much higher population of international students, but it is also the least requested building to live in, according to Maroni.  

So, if almost no one wants to live there, how do so many international students end up in a building that Palmer Pederson, an RA in Stewart from 2020-21, described as a “super beat up, pretty run-down dorm”?  

Humza Khan, who was an RA in McMillan from 2020-21 and in BJ during the 2021-22 school year, believes that it is due to structural failures. “Stewart is not the first choice for a lot of students, so students who get the opportunity to pick exactly where they want to go will choose anywhere else. But students who do not get the chance to pick, are put in Stewart,” Khan said.  “Often, that means [students] who are disadvantaged in some way, students who are having trouble with the college process and may not have the help needed to be able to pick their residence hall, may suffer.”  

Maroni recognizes that international students may submit their housing applications later than students from the United States.  

“We’re trying to acknowledge this as a barrier,” she stated. “And it’s not that no one requests it… a lot of the folks who are requesting [Stewart] are international students because they’ve heard from friends, ‘that’s where I lived my first year.’ So, we never would say, ‘no, we’re trying to divide where international students live.’” 

Residence Life also has plans that try to ensure all the late applicants are not funneled into one dorm. Every year, the university sets aside rooms in every dorm that holds first-year students (which excludes Boppell and the neighborhood houses) that Residence Life doesn’t fill until late July. But that doesn’t mean Stewart doesn’t become what Pederson calls “the overflow dorm.”  

Urvashi Lalwani, a senior who worked for two years in Residence Life, notes there may be a geographical factor at play here as well. “99% of the international students don’t get a chance to pre-visit campus and make decisions for themselves. They can’t tour unless it’s on a Google page, and you can’t really know what a building is like. But 99% of the other students that are here, who are not international students, do get to come here months before and see what they like and pick what they want,” Lalwani said. “I guess it just works out that way, that no one’s asking for Stewart and international students truly don’t have an opinion yet so they kind of are put in whatever is available.”  

“On the flip side of that,” Maroni said, “there’s been a really cool culture that has been built in Stewart for years because… a lot of students there may not have known they were coming to Whitworth until three weeks [before they started college].” 

Pederson, who oversaw eight residents in Stewart, believes Stewart was a very positive environment for international students. He said that when he was an RA, many of the Mongolian students in Stewart built a very unique community and ended up moving off-campus together halfway through the 2021-22 school year.  

However, he thought that due to COVID’s impact on low enrollment, his experience in Stewart may have been unique. The floor Pedersen was on housed sixteen residents total, even though he thought it could “probably house twice that much.” He said the sparse occupancy was one of the best parts of living in Stewart.  

He also thought Stewart provided an environment for students to work through culture shock. “I know multiple of them were a little quieter,” he said. “So, by having more space, I think it allowed them to feel a little bit more at home. For me as an RA, I could check in with them more often. Having somebody to talk to [in a more one-on-one situation] is really nice.” 

Good things can come out of negative situations, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that international students are disproportionately experiencing one of the worst residence halls on campus. Also, Khan points out that having a higher proportion of international students in one building can be a double-sided coin in terms of RA and resident relationships.  

Khan said it is essential for international students to “find people [specifically RAs] that they can connect with.”  

Pederson said that as a white U.S. student, “although I tried, I don’t think I really helped the international students on my floor that much.”  

Residence Life does make a conscientious effort to make sure the Stewart RAs are a good fit for the building, Maroni said. “[We take into consideration] the identities of RAs and their abilities to work with people from different religious backgrounds and different cultures.” 

On the flip side of this, Khan points out this can place an unfair burden on RAs who might relate more personally to the international students’ experiences. “[It’s] a little unfair on those RAs if they have a disproportionate amount of BIPOC/ international students… because as rewarding as that experience can be to relate to that many people, it’s also exhausting. And so, evening that workload out a little bit is more fair, not only for the other RAs who want to be able to help out with that more, but especially for them who have to deal with the burnout of knowing that a certain student is having issues: whether that be like their paperwork, adjusting to the culture or maybe even cultural prejudice.” 

Maroni acknowledged that Stewart RAs may have their own unique challenges but said, “I think if you talk to RAs, they would all say they’re different challenge… Stewart [is a] very small building, so each RA only has 10 to 13 residents. There may be higher need in terms of they [the residents] have more questions, but there’s a lot less of them… there are different challenges everywhere.”  

Now, there are obviously problems with every building on campus; no college experience is perfect. Pederson points out, “I think at some point, you reach a middle ground between the ideal living situation for all students and what the university is able to provide. “  

However, is the current situation truly the middle ground? Is allowing Stewart, one of the worst dorms on campus, to be a dorm that disproportionately represents international students really the best option Whitworth has?  

The reality is that no matter Whitworth’s intentions, Stewart’s housing situation disproportionately disadvantages international students due to things beyond their control. This is unfair and wrong. As a society, we need to broaden our stance, open our eyes and put together our ideas to try to find solutions for these systematic failures. Because if we don’t actively work toward equity for all, how good of a Christian university can we be?  

“It doesn’t feel fair,” Lalwani said.  

This year, Whitworth hasn’t had to worry about these questions, as Stewart has closed due to low enrollment. But when they do have to consider this again, Pederson gives us a potential solution.  

“I think it would be incredibly beneficial if there was an international student floor, kind of like they have an honors floor,” he said.  

This will certainly not fix all the differences and discrepancies that exist within Residence Life. And they don’t necessarily need to all be fixed. But this simple step could go a fair way to ensure that international students aren’t disproportionately representing one of the worst dorms on campus.