Foreign students protest fee at UMass

Student leaders at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst say more than 200 students have refused to pay a new fee charged to the campus's 1,600 international students, and are preparing to face the consequences of their protest as classes resume this week after spring break.

The $65-per-semester fee, included for the first time in spring semester bills that were due March 11, will help make up for cuts in the budget of the university's International Programs Office, a UMass spokesman said. He said a small portion of the fee will help pay for a new, federally mandated monitoring system for students from other countries implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

All foreign students must be registered in the national tracking system, called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, before they can receive a student visa.

Critics say the UMass fee is wrong on two counts: Students should not be asked to pay for their own surveillance, and international students should not be asked to shoulder the burden of paying for international programs by themselves.

"It's not ethical to charge someone for their own surveillance . . . no matter what percentage of the fee is for SEVIS," said George Liu, 31, a graduate student from China who plans to teach at a Chinese university. "The fee-for-service model is also problematic, because you can't single out every group. You can't charge students of color for diversity programs, or women students for the women's center."

Led by the Graduate Employee Organization, a campus union that represents 1,000 international graduate students who work at UMass as teaching or research assistants, fee opponents staged a rowdy protest outside administrative offices last month, and set up an online petition condemning the new fee. They urged international students to refuse to pay the fee -- an action that could lead to their involuntary removal from the university and, eventually, the loss of their student visas.

Protest leaders say more than 200 foreign students signed cards pledging to refuse to pay the $65 fee. Nervously waiting to see how the university will respond, Liu said he expects to receive an e-mail or letter about his failure to pay in the next week or two.

The website for the UMass bursar's office reminds students that "in order to be in good standing with the University, you must meet your financial obligations . . . by all published deadlines." Consequences for failing to do so, listed on the site, include the loss of meal privileges, the cancellation of class registration, eviction from residence halls, and "administrative withdrawal," or the involuntary removal of the student from UMass.

"Everyone's scared, but I'm willing to take it as far as I can," Liu said. "I don't want to lose my student status, but [the fee] is an insult, because it's so discriminatory."

The International Programs Office at the university houses support for international students -- about 1,600 graduate and undergraduate students from 70 countries -- as well as study abroad programs for all UMass students.

The office's budget was cut by $240,000 last year, said Patrick Callahan, a spokesman for UMass; the new fee would restore a little more than $200,000. A small amount of fee income would help keep track of foreign students, as required by law.

"SEVIS is mandated," he said. "We don't have a choice."

Many universities have struggled with the costs of implementing the new surveillance systems, made mandatory last year.

Controversy has erupted on other campuses over similar fees; at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a plan to charge international students a $50 fee was abandoned last year after students protested. University of Chicago students also protested what they called a "surveillance tax" on international students last year.

Chris Vials, a doctoral student in English at UMass and the president of the graduate students' union, said administrators have agreed to meet with fee opponents in the next few weeks.

He said some students think the best solution would be to charge a reduced fee to everyone on campus; he said a $5 or $10 fee, if spread across the entire student body of about 23,000 would produce the same amount for international programs.

On top of the $750 fee increase all UMass students are paying this semester after state budget cuts, "I don't think anyone would have a problem" with paying a few dollars more, Vials said.

The SEVIS system "is supposed to protect domestic students -- so why should international students pay for it?" he said.

Other students argued that the cost of international programs should be shared by all because having a diverse, international campus benefits every student.

Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.