Marist International Students In Talks With School Administration Over Winter Housing Costs

UPDATE, 12/21/2020, 2:54 P.M. : An update from MISA President Prashansa Malakar notes individual student meetings with Marist administrators resulted in some of these international students being given campus jobs or having their new dorm fees waived and reduced back to $50 per week, instead of the new amount of $40 per day.

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY - After an outcry from Marist College international students last month over raised intersemester housing costs, university administrators have finally agreed to meet with students individually to review their cases and decide how best to meet their needs.

In an email sent out on Nov. 13 - eleven days before the end of the in-person semester - school officials highlighted their decision to increase the rate for students seeking to occupy campus facilities through the winter break by nearly 200 percent.

An accommodation set aside for use by the international student populace's convenience, the choice would raise the usual fee of $100 per week ($50 if students were working) to $40 per day - or $280 per week - starting the week of Thanksgiving.

Marist International Student Association (MISA) treasurer Victoria Attala, a junior from Argentina, outlined the initial situation in an Instagram TV video on Nov. 13, the same day she and fellow international students received the email.

"Before the Fall semester started, all internationals received an email that stated that internationals were going to have access to the residence halls during the entire semester, no matter the break, and even stay until the spring," Attala noted in the video. "Based on that fact, a lot of us decided to [still] come here."

Averting any concerns from students returning from Thanksgiving break amidst another of the COVID-19 pandemic's national infection spikes, Marist shortened the in-person fall semester to end on Nov. 24 with the last week of classes and finals week to proceed virtually.

"Usually a lot of international students stay back during winter and were planning to stay back this winter as well, but after receiving that email 11 days before the end of the in person session," MISA president Prashansa Malakar told me in an Instagram direct message," and also due to the delayed response from the college a lot of them decided to find other accommodations."

Campus closure for American students coincided with the beginning of the international students' $40/day fee to stay on campus, 56 total days until Marist's original Jan.18 projected reopening.

"A lot of students cannot travel back to their home countries because of travel complications, hence were seeking housing for the break, and were promised housing before the start of the semester," Malakar, a junior from Nepal, wrote. "We don’t have any information about when Spring is going to start but they haven’t said anything about making it entirely online yet."

In fact, Marist just updated their projected start to the spring semester on Dec. 3, delaying campus' reopening and in-person classes to February 2021 based on their assessment of the pandemic. The academic calendar was always susceptible to change over health and safety procedures, in this context possibly adding a larger financial burden for international students seeking to stay.

Marist's Revised Schedule from Dec. 3

Marist's Schedule as of Nov. 21

Attala specified, under normal circumstances, students dorming through the Christmas session would pay $100 per week if they were not working, $50 if they had a job. But international students are only allowed to work on campus, and there would be no job opportunities on a campus vacant from a pandemic.

"We’re kind of lost in a sense that...everyone is dealing with finals right now...it’s a very uncertain situation for everyone, so imagine how it is for us, who are away from home, and maybe some students don’t have the resources to go back to their countries or pay $3,000 for staying here," Attala said in the video. "It’s not like the students even have a choice...we feel the need as internationals to share what is happening...with students who are not international because we deserve the basic right of consideration."

Malakar estimated there to be about 40 international students that intended to live at Marist through the winter, but are now reconsidering and seeking alternatives due to the cost. Malakar and Attala told me they are thankful for school friends who opened up their homes to them for the break. Marist seemed to offer no hosting substitutes for the international students having to operate at a disadvantage this winter.

After almost two weeks of email and social media campaigns by MISA, the college finally reached out to to its own International Student Services (ISS) department and the student representatives.

"Marist finally replied to us this morning about setting up individual meetings with some of their staff to listen to the concerns of students who are staying back," Malakar told me on Nov. 24.

Malakar emphasized the logistical nightmare international students experience when Marist's timeline of notifying potentially affected parties is shortsighted in regards to their mandates of campus-wide closure.

"Even if there weren’t travel restrictions, making traveling plans at the very last minute is super stressful for students, especially because the semester is not even over and the flights are going to be more expensive and simply not affordable," she said. "A common theme is that they are poor at communicating things on time because they give students no time to prepare both logistically and mentally."

This is not the first time Marist international students were the last to hear about their own "eviction". A Change.org petition from March 2020 by Class of '20 alumnus Andrew Papa garnered over 1,300 signatures. While Papa did not respond for further comment, his petition detailed an almost ultimatum international students were issued on March 25: acquire seasonal living accommodations or travel arrangements back home within the next 48 hours.

Extending students' 2020 spring break by an extra week, administrators convened on how to safely approach the rest of the semester. The American face of the pandemic was well within its first month, and regular classes were not looking to be such a sustainable investment. The promptness to halt in-person classes achieved in evidently invalidating the campus housing secured by international students, which was already paid for through May.

"Last Spring...international students were given a notice of only 48 hours in advance to leave the campus after spring break when classes went online," Malakar texted. "But due to the backlash that they received, they were allowed to stay until the end of the semester, some of them also stayed during the summer."

MISA's email petition, for dissatisfied classmates to use to message Marist administrators, identifies how housing should have never been an issue in either semester's case:

"The semester officially ends on December 14th. The housing cost for this year is not reduced. Therefore, international students and other students have paid for housing till December 14th, not November 24th. It appears Marist college is double charging international students when they have no other option."

For both Attala and Malakar, whose home countries are dealing with hardships combating the coronavirus outbreak, "going home" is not as simple an act as driving two to three hours through the Tri-State area or buying an average plane ticket.

"Argentina is not dealing very well with the pandemic, cases are going up, that’s why I cannot go home basically," Attala told me in an Instagram direct message. "Also the fact that if I go home, I may not be able to enter the United States and I am not willing to compromise my education."

My own brother, who's studying in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for his doctorate, decided to stay there for the holidays instead of risking infection in the United States and complicate re-entering the UAE.

"Nepal isn’t doing so well with the pandemic as they are seeing cases rise every single day," Malakar wrote. "I decided not to go back because it was so hard for me to get here in the first place as flights were impossible to find due to the travel ban in Nepal; so if I go back, coming back for the spring would be so stressful."

The MISA email petition elaborated on how elements such as travel are beyond students' realm of control:

"These students come from all across the world, they cannot just pack their bags and go back. Travel requires months of planning and getting tickets early. Additionally, various countries have closed their international airports to contain the spread of the virus."

Unfortunately, a number of international students had already found themselves barred from returning to Marist due to their home countries and the United States' own travel restrictions.

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After a semester fraught with numerous dorm and campus wide quarantines, Marist College officials have finally given into the idea of a tentative in-person spring semester. Online, they share precautions students are expected to adhere to while home, like receiving and showing proof of a flu shoot in order to return to campus, whenever that may eventually be.

It seems pandemic times have only worsened Marist's ability to effectively communicate in 2020. Students have found issue with how Marist's COVID-19 Dashboard only publicly updates itself on occasion under exceptional circumstances. A matter dating back to when I was a Red Fox between 2014 and 2018, the Marist Alerts email system set up by Safety & Security Director John Blaisdell always failed to notify students of ongoing crimes in an orderly fashion. As always, there has to be a certain standard of recognition to warrant an email-blast to all students and faculty.

With a majority of its students home for the season, the Dashboard's Alert Level returned back to "GREEN" for the first time since October. The week of Thanksgiving, when students were still present, it was at "YELLOW". A level above that is "ORANGE", where the COVID-19 infection rate equals the threshold of New York State's policy to issue a school lockdown. Ironically, it meets the requirements of full campus closure, but you need to wait two weeks before doing so, unless conditions worsen within that time.

Attala and Malakar spoke highly of the ISS department staff in charge of managing the international students

"Wendy Fritz, the assistant director of ISS is the the most amazing human being ever, she has been helpful through most of the things that concerns international students and is always ready to help," Malakar wrote. "Sadly, a lot of these decisions come from the administration and the ISS office finds out about them around the same time that we international students do."

I reached out to Fritz and ISS Director Deborah Holtman. Only Holtman responded to me via email on Dec. 8, assuring that the international students needs are being met and that Marist is working to address those concerns. One paragraph reads:

"The semester presented many challenges to many programs since the beginning of the epidemic. The college has been working through appropriate solutions based on the government and medical recommendations that were often in flux. Matters are stabilizing and Marist is working individually with students and making sure needs are being met."

Finances comes to mind when the concept of "[new] challenges" are brought up regarding "appropriate [pandemic] solutions". International students affording American college is a narrative I have explored in the past at Marist in 2016, when there was over 300 registered international students and over 20 were NCAA college athletes on the school's many boys and girls sports teams.

Marist's social media advertises a pure, clean educational community worthy of investing into. Aside from the mass emails students and faculty received through their assigned email addresses or Interim-President Dennis J. Murray's newsletters acknowledging community affairs, there is no clear window to view the daily goings-on's without venturing onto the college's website.

The prerogative of the institution's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts - just like any other business - only previews the successes of the campus, such as their containment and perpetual testing for the coronavirus. No mention of the dorm lockdowns, quarantine extensions, students testing positive, students suspended for partying off campus - all the negative press is saved for the private, open-ended forums issued through Murray and Dean of Student Affairs Deborah DiCaprio's emails to the school.

I received no reply when I reached out to DiCaprio for a comment.

The greater Hudson Valley community and parents of students are not directly cued in on Marist's efforts, as any hint of worry on their social media is only visible when parents tag and tweet at Marist, panicking to ensure their child gets tested before exiting the semester so they can fly home.

In short, the picture Marist presents of itself is a promising financial venture for outside parties (investors, not the off-campus frat house kind of parties). And just like every other industry, educational businesses are no exception to the COVID-19 crisis.

President Murray characterized the fiscal approach to this past fall semester as "some belt-tightening" in a memo about reopening procedures from this past summer. Reports by both the student-run Marist Circle and the local Poughkeepsie Journal indicate budget cuts Marist has had to endure because of the pandemic. Over 10 administrative assistants represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Local 1120 chapter, had been laid off across several different departments. According to the CWA spokesperson, Marist had waived the employees rights to a 60 day notice and opted out of giving contract buyouts, but that cannot be entirely confirmed.

"As far as the international students fees are concerned, I do know that Marist, like almost all colleges, is struggling financially," School of Management academic advisor Karen Tomkins-Tinch (and family friend for transparency's sake) texted me. "Many staff members and faculty were let go this past summer...I am sure that the decision on what to charge the students was not made with malice, COVID has made finances exponentially worse."

For background, before Tomkins-Tinch's retirement as a full-time employee in spring 2019, she was the director of the Center for Multicultural Affairs (CMA) office. Until then, CMA oversaw the international students and assisted them with any housing and academic issues, along with planning events to educate all students on the importance of embracing cultural diversity. According to the current CMA director, Iris Ruiz-Grech, the ISS department was established the fall of 2019 and overtook responsibilities for the international demographic.

Ruiz-Grech directed me to contact Marist's Communications & Marketing department. I reached out to, but received no response from the office's representative Judith Sears. Ruiz-Grech also instructed me that the increase to winter dorm costs was decided by housing. Again, I emailed and received no reply from Sarah English, the Director of Housing & Residential Life.

Efforts to get in touch with the Marist Student Government Association (SGA) and Marist Executive Vice President Geoffrey L. Brackett received none-responses as well.

Let it be known that no students, let alone the international students, expect anything to be given to them, especially for basic operational costs to be free.

"If you stay here during winter or summer," Attala said in the MISA Instagram video, "you have to pay because the school needs to run electricity, water, security, etc."

Putting it even more frankly, Attala went on to say: "we’re not even demanding for food accommodations or anything, we’re only asking for a roof."

Reserving a spot at a private university such as Marist by writing a check for tuition payments commits a student to paying a semester's worth of groceries, meal plans, housing or rent, textbook costs, transportation expenditures. President Murray thumped his chest over the summer when he announced a zero-percent increase to tuition, at a time when full tuition and room and board equates to $60,000.

On Nov. 10, three days before the international students received their email, Marist promoted its winter session classes. It is naïve of me to criticize a business for making one of its many services known, but when the chance of next semester's curriculum being in-person is still prospective, it is hard for me to endorse paying $20,000 of tuition for half a year of online courses.

An aside from the international students' case, students everywhere should research opportunities that offer cheaper educational experiences, such as community colleges. Easier said than done, but if the credits are eligible to transfer, one would save thousands of dollars for taking a gap semester closer to home.

“Internationals are not asking for charity and staying for free –– we are asking for a reasonable price and a clear channel of communication since it is what we deserve as students of the college,” Attala reiterated in an interview with the Marist Circle.

MISA's email petition charges that "the amount of $40 [per day] appears to be a penalty to discourage students from living on-campus and [is] not a reasonable fee."

"I understand that the college has to charge us some type of fee, and considering the circumstances I know it’s hard to let us stay like the other breaks," Malakar messaged me. "However, you can’t go back on your words when you told students that they would have access [to] their housing till the end of spring. Also, if this was communicated way earlier, that would have given us more time to prepare both logistically and mentally."

As previously stated, Marist has reached out to the ISS department and all international students several weeks ago, meeting with them on a case-by-case basis to assess their living needs. For the sake of international students disenfranchised by the pandemic, one can hope this is a learning experience for Marist administrators in listening and tending to the needs of their constituents.