評論
打印
Is Gun Violence Scaring Off International Students?
槍支暴力嚇退國際學生？
When Zhenyang Xu, a second-year international Ph.D. student at Michigan State University, first received the alert that there was an active shooter on campus, he barely thought twice about it.
當密歇根州立大學二年級博士留學生徐振陽第一次收到校園內有槍手出沒的警報時，他幾乎沒有在意。
“I looked at my phone and I just thought,‘Oh, OK. Another one,’” he said.“It’s so normalized here and we get so much news about shootings that I didn’t notice it was something entirely different and scarier until more alerts started coming.”
“我看著手機，只是想，‘哦，好吧。下一個信息’。這種消息在這里太平常了，我們收到過太多關于槍擊事件的消息，以至于在更多警報出現之前，我完全沒有注意到這次發生的事件不同尋常、更加可怕?！?/p>
Three students were killed and another five were injured in the Feb. 13 shooting at Michigan State, including two international students from Xu’s native China—one of whom, 20-year-old John Hao, was paralyzed from the neck down. Xu said the tragedy was a wake-up call, an all-too-visceral reminder that the plague of gun violence he’d read about in the news was a frightening reality in the country where he’d chosen to study.
2月13日，密歇根州立大學發生校園槍擊事件，三名學生遇害，另有五人受傷，其中包括兩名中國留學生。20歲的郝同學在這次槍擊事件中受傷，導致頸部以下癱瘓。徐振陽說，這場悲劇是一個警鐘、一個極具沖擊力的提醒，提醒他那些曾經在新聞里看到的槍支暴力問題在美國是一個可怕的現實。
The fear of being caught in a mass shooting has become a major factor in international students’ decisions about whether to study in the U.S. According to a fall 2018 survey by the Institute of International Education, the issue with the biggest year-over-year increase in concern among international applicants in 2017–18—a year in which U.S. institutions saw a decline in international enrollment—was their “physical safety in the U.S.”
對大規模槍擊事件的擔憂已成為影響國際學生赴美留學的主要因素。國際教育協會2018年秋季的一項調查顯示，2017-18學年的國際申請者對他們“在美國的人身安全”的擔憂同比增幅最大，這一年美國學校的國際學生人數有所下降。
It’s also a daily concern for many international students already studying in America: according to a 2019 survey by the World Education Services, a quarter of international students in the U.S. expressed worry about gun violence at their institution.
人身安全也是許多已經在美國的留學生每天都關心的問題：根據世界教育服務中心2019年的一項調查，四分之一在美留學生對其所在學校的槍支暴力問題感到擔憂。
Rajika Bhandari, an independent consultant on international education research and strategy, said that in recent years fears about gun violence and personal safety have eclipsed other perceived drawbacks of studying in the U.S.
國際教育研究和戰略獨立顧問拉吉卡·班達里表示，近年來，對槍支暴力和人身安全的擔憂已經超越其他問題，成為在美國留學最突出的弊端。
“In broad global surveys, when students have been asked about the downsides of going to the U.S., we’ve seen the lack of personal safety rise to the top,” she said. “Before it was primarily about cost and visa hurdles, which of course are still there; it’s just that personal safety has really become quite magnified.”
她說："在廣泛的全球調查中，當學生被問及赴美留學的缺點時，人身安全問題上升到了首位。而以前主要的障礙是費用和簽證，當然這些仍然存在；只是個人安全問題真的愈發嚴重。"
The gun violence driving these fears has not abated; in the past few months alone, campus shootings have dominated headlines. In October, a University of Arizona professor was murdered by a former student; the next month, three University of Virginia football players were shot and killed on their team bus, allegedly by a classmate. The February mass shooting at Michigan State exacerbated the concerns of international families since the gunman injured two of their own.
而槍支暴力問題并沒有得到有效控制，僅在過去幾個月里，校園槍擊事件就占據了各大新聞頭條。去年10月，亞利桑那大學的一名教授被教過的學生殺害；11月，弗吉尼亞大學的三名足球運動員在球隊的大巴上被槍殺，據報道搶手是他們的一名同學。今年2月，密歇根州立大學的大規模槍擊事件加劇了國際家庭的擔憂，在這起槍擊事件中有兩名受害者是國際學生。
It’s not just campus shootings driving safety fears. In November 2021, Shaoxiong Zheng, a Chinese international student at the University of Chicago—a dream destination for many international students—was shot and killed in a street robbery. A week later, hundreds of students, many of them international, marched across campus to call for stricter gun legislation, holding signs reading, “We’re here to learn, not to die” and “Who’s next?”
引發安全擔憂的不僅僅是校園槍擊事件。2021年11月，芝加哥大學中國留學生鄭少雄在一次街頭搶劫中被槍殺。一周后，數百名學生（其中許多是國際學生）在校園內游行，要求加強槍支立法。他們手舉標語：“我們來這里是為了學習，而不是赴死”，“下一個是誰？”
The 2019 WES survey found not only that international students in the U.S. were concerned about gun violence but also that some were more concerned than others. Only 25 percent of students from Latin America and 32 percent from Europe said they were worried about gun violence, compared to upward of 40 percent from South Asia and East Asia.
世界教育服務中心的調查還發現，與其他地區學生相比，亞洲學生更擔心槍支暴力問題。25%的拉丁美洲學生和32%的歐洲學生表示他們擔心槍支暴力，而在南亞和東亞學生中這一比例高達40%。
Jenny Lee, a professor of educational policy studies at the University of Arizona, chalks this up to the rarity of guns in China and other Asian countries.
亞利桑那大學教育政策研究教授珍妮·李將此歸因于槍支在中國和其他亞洲國家的稀有性。
“In Asia in particular, it’s not just hard to obtain a gun; you don’t really ever see them.,” she said. “So that general sense of unease around guns is heightened.”
“尤其是在亞洲，槍支是很罕見的、很難獲得的。因此，亞洲學生對槍支暴力的不安感加更強烈?！?/p>
編輯：董靜。李蕙帆（實習）
本文轉載自中國日報網，如有侵權，請聯系我們刪除。
