Scholarships available for study abroad candidates

In Tuesday’s Diamondback, Nikkee Porcaro’s piece “Study abroad predicament” raised questions about the affordability of study abroad, especially for out-of-state students. Our office welcomes all students to meet with us in 1101 Holzapfel Hall and discuss their study abroad concerns, including how to finance their experience. You may also find it useful to visit our website at www.umd.edu/studyabroad.

Students should know they can apply some or all of their financial aid to study abroad. In fact, some study abroad experiences are less expensive than a semester of study on the campus, including some exchange programs that are tuition-free and supported by the university. There are also a number of scholarships available to fund overseas experiences to further reduce the costs independent of state of residence. Depending on their country of choice, students may also be eligible for program- or country-specific scholarships available to out-of-state students.

Both in- and out-of-state students pay the same program fee for semester and short-term study abroad programs. The university support of additional staff for our office and relocation to 1101 Holzapfel further demonstrates a commitment to the growth of study abroad for all students, including those who choose an international experience to reap the benefits of the President’s Promise Initiative.

We look forward to meeting with Porcaro and other students as they embark on a once in a lifetime experience by studying abroad.

Michael UlrichAssociate DirectorInternational Education Services

Opinion of RAs misguided

Aside from implying that resident assistants have psychic abilities (“They know when there are people in a room drinking and when it is or isn’t going to become a problem.”), Josh Wert insults RAs by suggesting we aren’t doing enough to earn our room and board in his letter to the editor yesterday.

As an RA, allow me to rebuke some of Wert’s comments. First, he asserts in the above quotation we always know if residents are drinking and whether it’s going to become a problem. Unfortunately, we don’t have a magic ball to show us how that next Natty Light will affect our residents’ judgment. From there, Wert suggests that RAs need “more freedom to allow safe drinking to occur, but [to be] more responsible when things get way out of hand.” Again, the difference between “safe drinking” and the dangerous sort is one that RAs don’t want to wait around to find out. A safe, tipsy resident one minute can be violent the next. Fortunately, there may be a police officer nearby to assist us.

Wert is right about dorms being the safest place to drink, but it’s the decisions made when imbibing that can be unsafe anywhere. It’s not the University Police’s or even the RAs’ policies that need to be changed; it’s the unsafe decisions in our culture of drinking. Besides, the amount of time police spend in the dorms instead of the streets is minuscule, but their presence allows RAs to do our job more effectively.

The true value in RAs is their training in finding the right resources for a situation. It may be the counseling center, the career center or even the police. All too often, a student becomes a victim because they were too intoxicated to think to call 4NITE. Maybe we need to expand the nighttime transportation services, but in the meantime we shouldn’t attack the RAs – we earn our pay every day.

Matt Stern

Junior

English and government and politics

This letter refers to another letter to the editor on September 14th titled “RA’s can help stop underage drinking“.

Lack of student vote bigger problem than sluggish SGA

I wanted to comment on the assertion made in “Poor turnout a foregone result” (Sept. 13) that “students were failed” by “timid voter registration and mobilization efforts” of the Student Government Association and that any student participation in the voting process was a “miracle” that was “probably almost entirely due to the efforts of students themselves to get educated.”

While I think it would have been great if the SGA had been more successful in educating students about voting, I am concerned by the attitude that it is miraculous for students to take it upon themselves to be educated in their role as citizens of a democratic country. Anyone who can read and has access to a computer can get all the information they ever wanted to know about how and where to vote and what the issues are. The fact that many students do not concern themselves with doing so is a much larger problem than SGA not having its act together.

Sarah GingoldSeniorGovernment and politics