Student Union
Code Yellow Has Student Quarantined in Qatar
My studies already disrupted by a 1,400 mile trip from Ethiopia, I heard my phone ping to tell me I’d be on the move again. This time, to a different COVID-19 quarantine facility, 20 minutes away.
My school — Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois — is in the American Midwest, but I attend classes in Qatar, at the university’s Doha campus in the Gulf States region. I am working toward a bachelor’s degree in journalism, remotely, like most of the world’s students, because the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered campuses and pushed classes online.
I had just returned from my home country, and was quarantined at a hotel in Doha for the standard seven days before I could join the general population. When the COVID-19 app on my phone failed to turn from quarantine yellow to go-ahead green by Day 7 after my entry COVID test, I knew I wouldn’t be set free.
My phone app — called EHTERAZ, or “precaution” in Arabic — is a contact-tracing and risk detecting app, operated by the Ministry of Public Health in Qatar and used by all residents and visitors.
While green indicates COVID-19 negative, yellow means quarantine, and red says COVID-19 positive. No one can enter an establishment, restaurant or mall unless the QR code on their EHTERAZ app shows a green health status.
I’d be going next to a special quarantine dormitory in Education City, a section of clustered universities, to wait for my app to turn green.
Education City (EC) hosts well-known, international universities, such as Weill-Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, Georgetown, Texas A&M, and my school, Northwestern.
It is home to about 8,000 students. About half are Qataris. The rest come from Latin America, East and South Asia, and North and Sub-Saharan Africa and a few from Europe. Housing is divided by gender.
Started in 1997 with Virginia Commonwealth University, EC has slowly become a hotspot for other international satellite campuses.
Nearby, it hosts the sustainably designed Oxygen Park, known as the “green lung” of the 12-square-kilometer development, according to the Qatar Foundation website.
Other recreational, artistic and research facilities include the Al Shaqb riding club, showcasing Qatar’s long-standing equestrian culture of Arabian horses, and the Arab Museum of Modern Art, featuring modern and contemporary art from the Arab world.
It also hosts the glittering, expansive Qatar National Library, which is open to students. And the Education City Stadium, completed last year and earning a five-star Global Sustainability Assessment System certification, will be one of the venues for the 2022 FIFA World Cup matches.
In March 2020, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, some of the international students studying in EC cleared out for home. But many remained in Doha in lockdown.
In March, the Ministry of Public Health imposed lockdowns of almost all public spaces, such as retail stores, places of worship, entertainment, restaurants and cafes.
“Lockdown restrictions got extreme. Everything in the country was shut down, except for grocery stores,” said Azma Mulundika, a journalism sophomore at Northwestern University, from Zambia.
“I never left the dorms once the quarantine got severe because the cases were going up every day. It had reached 1,000-plus cases at some point, and that’s a really high number for such a small country,” explained Mulundika.
Most flights deemed high-risk for COVID were canceled. Students were afraid to travel home, worried that Qatar would close its borders and they wouldn’t be able to return to university. When outbound flights were available, students and residents had to complete extensive procedures.
“Traveling during that time from here to anywhere was such a lengthy process because you had to fill in all these documents and you had to get all these tests. And COVID tests are very uncomfortable,” Mulundika said.
“Coming back, you have to get quarantined. At some point it was two weeks, and then it recently reduced to one week, and you still have to quarantine when you go to the dorms,” she explained. “I just didn’t want to have to go through all of that.”
Sometimes the EHTERAZ notifications are delayed.
“After being in lockdown for seven days … you just want to go outside, see people, and interact,” said Mekdelawit Worku, a junior communications student at Northwestern University, from Ethiopia.
Students have reported a decrease participation and engagement with online classes.
“It’s not the quality [of the course content] but the actual lack of presence in the classroom,” said Worku. “When you’re present in the environment, you kind of feel obligated to be there. Home and class don’t necessarily go together.”
Other students report that online learning doesn’t work well with hands-on classes.
“Because we’re in science classes, a lot of our classes have labs that we need to be on site to do. And especially last year, a lot of our labs ended up being canceled,” said Zoha Baig, a second-year pre-med student at Weill Cornell University in Qatar.
“So, we basically have to try and take some sort of online counterpart instead of doing labs which made it harder to learn,” she said.
For students who remained in Doha, the Qatar Foundation, a non-profit organization responsible for launching Education City, fully covered housing and meals during the summer 2020.
But isolation and loneliness came with confinement, on top of maintaining schoolwork.
“I remember being sad, I remember being extremely depressed, and I remembered crying at some point,” Mulundika told VOA. “Being in quarantine and isolation by yourself is just kind of poison right now.”
“At first, I was just worried about people back home, my family and my friends all over the world,” Worku said. “But then I started to feel lonely when my family back home quarantined together and yet I was still here. As a student, you’re still stuck in this country and air travel is also shut down so you can't even go home even if you wanted to. Thinking about those things, there was a sense of feeling trapped but also grateful to be at a place where I have a good Wi-Fi and a safety net, to be honest.”
Selma Fejzullaj, a freshman student at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Arts arrived in Doha in September 2020 from Turkey. Fejzullaj took her classes online and had few opportunities to socialize.
“Until winter break, I did not have face-to-face interaction with my peers, as all my classes are online. All the activities I was attending were online clubs, so everything was through a computer screen,” said Fejzullaj.
As the pandemic drags on, students say the university experience is lacking.
“Right now, I do not feel as a university student since I did not have the university experience. I still cannot comprehend the fact that my freshman year will finish in less than 20 days. So, I really do hope that we go back to normal,” said Fezjullah. “I cannot see myself finishing my sophomore year also like this.”
Qatar is planning a controlled re-escalation of COVID-19 restrictions following a steady increase in the number of COVID-19 cases over the past few weeks, according to the Ministry of Public Health in February.
A few classes are resuming on a hybrid basis but almost all classes are online. Use of the library or a lab is allowed only for the COVID-19 negative. The app alerts users when they are near individuals with yellow or red status.
The Ministry of Public Health in Qatar has approved the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and it will provide them to citizens and residents in Qatar for free. Students are eager for vaccination efforts to include them.
Sitting in quarantine in EC, I thought about how returning to Qatar would get me the vaccine earlier than if I had stayed back home.
Finally, my phone pinged again, and a green barcode appeared. I was elated, but exhausted, and promptly took a long nap once I reached my dormitory.
See all News Updates of the Day
International students may be able to get jobs at school
International students studying in the United States may be able to work on campus.
Jobs can include working in libraries, labs, food service and dormitories – but students will have to research the rules before applying for jobs, according to U.S. News & World Report. (September 2024)
Report says college rankings have the potential to mislead
Each year, prominent lists of college and university rankings are compiled and released to the public, but a report conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago says those rankings have the potential to mislead.
Writing in Forbes, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier says changing methodologies can distort results, and profit motives can create doubt. He argues that rankings should be replaced by an objective rating system. (September 2024)
College athletes push for voter turnout while largely avoiding controversy as election nears
Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
- By VOA News
Bloomberg Philanthropies says investment in low-income students fell short
More than $140 million from billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s charitable programs have been spent getting talented low-income students into top colleges, but an analysis of those programs found they fell short of goals.
The Wall Street Journal took a look at the programs, their objectives, and how they haven’t led to the results Bloomberg Philanthropies wanted to see. (September 2024)
- By VOA News
Music students find community through 'international chat' program
State University of New York at Fredonia is trying a new method to help international music students feel at home.
A professor at the school hosts informal chats -- known as "international chat" -- several times a semester. The goal, the school says in an article, is to function "as a study group session for international students facing challenges that are unique to international students."
Read the full story here. (October 2024)
