A delegation of student government presidents from Ivy League universities, including Vincent Andrews ’11, president of Cornell’s Student Assembly, traveled to China for a biannual student networking trip in August. However, the students did not encounter the open dialogue they had expected.
“It was truly an honor to be on this trip, and I was impressed by [everything],” Andrews said. “That being said, the only disappointment was the lack of opportunity to speak frankly with students … We weren’t able to truly establish a dialogue on the cultural divides between America and China.”
Two student forums were the only opportunities for delegates to communicate directly with Chinese college students. Both forums were recorded and supervised by government officials.
“The only [cultural] issue we could try to discuss was freedom of speech, but when we got to the issue, the answer was always avoided … When I tried to get some one-on-one with students after the forum, we were always rushed off to other appointments.”
Andrews said he realized this problem and discussed it with the rest of the Ivy student presidents with two days left in the trip.
Some students, like Diane Mokoro, a senior at Brown University and president of the university’s Undergraduate Council of Students, agreed that the group was taken by surprise and expected more interaction with Chinese students. But others took a more passive stance.
Read the full story at the Cornell Daily Sun.
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