The other day, my roommate walked into our common room and abruptly announced that she would not be on for sophomore summer. My other roommates and I quickly asked why, but she just looked at us, shook her head, and further informed us that she wouldn’t be on for senior winter either. A bit perplexed to say the least, we sat there, not knowing what to say. After a little while, we asked what would drive her to suddenly decide to re-shape her Dartmouth career, miss out on the legendary sophomore summer, and be off-campus during the middle of senior year to boot. She simply said, “I’m an international student, and this government sucks.” Strong words. She then passed us a paper which explained the apparent madness to us.

In a recent ruling, the Department of Homeland Security made it clear that it will begin to strictly enforce certain restrictions on the enrollment patterns of international students — a move that will alter the entire concept of the much lauded D-Plan. After sifting through four pages of intricate legal jargon, we discerned that the basic premise of the policy was encapsulated in this excerpt from the College’s notification of internationals: “One annual vacation term is allowed per year as long as the term is taken after one full year of enrollment. One full year is defined for Dartmouth as nine consecutive months of enrollment. This means all students must be enrolled for at least three terms before they can take one leave term. After the leave term, the student must enroll again in the next academic term.”

This particular ruling was yet another measure that the government has instituted to tighten the reigns on international students. I can only assume that this recent specification is an effort to strengthen immigration laws in general in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Due to the fact that many of the terrorists involved in the attack were here on student visas, there has been a push for increased vigilance regarding foreign students. In the past two years alone, the immigration laws, and consequently, student immigration laws, have gone from allowing internationals to easily get a Social Security card to now only making them eligible for a Social Security if they have job status here (proven by an on-campus pay check). This is even observable on a more local level, as anyone who has been stopped by the oh-so-friendly Vermont Border Patrol – which has been known to grill students about their citizenship status and college majors if they appear even slightly foreign (trust me, it’s happened to me more than once, even though I am a U.S. citizen) – can attest to.

Although my roommate and the rest of the international students here can’t help but perceive this as a government ploy to mess with Dartmouth students, I believe it is just another ill-timed, bureaucratic measure to ensure that immigration laws are in the most standardized form that they can possibly be. While I understand that the government needs to take stronger actions to ensure national security, I do think that there are more appropriate ways of doing so. Rather than springing this refined ruling on students, the government should have been more sensitive regarding this issue and allowed affected students more time to prepare accordingly.

As my roommate remarked, ”I feel like I would have made different decisions regarding my D-plan had I known about these rulings right from the start.”

It is understandable for the government to make these decisions, but I suspect that these paper-pushers and number-crunchers don’t really consider the ramifications of their policies on the individuals they are affecting through their immediate and indiscriminate implementation of such policies. In the meantime, we must painfully watch and empathize as Dartmouth’s international students are confined by the complex web of red tape that the US government is weaving around them.