New Hampshire House Rep. Joe Sweeney, a Salem Republican, filed a right-to-know request with the University System of New Hampshire (USNH) to determine how many international students are being admitted and how many N.H. students are being denied, according to a press release.
Following this request, the University of New Hampshire (UNH) released a statement denying Sweeney’s claim that international students are getting preferential treatment at the expense of N.H. students, according to WMUR.
In many instances concerning the safety of immigrant and international students, it is important to make a lot of noise. When UNH President Elizabeth Chilton denied a request to make the university’s campus a sanctuary space, her excuse of trying to avoid drawing attention was a faint gesture at commitment to student safety because it expressed submission to immigration enforcement before the heat had even turned on.
In this case, however, Sweeney seems like he wants to make as much noise as possible so he can control the narrative. This is not the time to play his game and allow the focus to be on N.H. students as uniquely deserving of an N.H. education; higher education institutions need to shut Sweeney up by focusing on their true internal values and giving the narrative back to the voters.
As a student-journalist who has previously submitted right-to-know requests to USNH myself, I believe in a citizen’s right to have access to records that relate to their interests and well-being. However, I do not believe Sweeney has such values in mind.
Sweeney is rejecting the idea that the standards of N.H. higher education are objective enough. Why is he so concerned about N.H. citizens receiving an in-state education if our public institutions have supposedly fallen to the rise of unfair diversity or whatever the boogeyman of the week is? It seems to me he is more concerned about maintaining a bias toward N.H. students regardless of their level of promise or success. What happened to Republicans’ good old-fashioned meritocracy?
It used to be that conservatives would at least pretend they believed in a better life for immigrants or, notably, non-white residents of the U.S. Now, it seems like Sweeney is dropping the façade and insisting on his ability to deny those he considers undesirable the chance to make lives for themselves and act as constructive contributors to the N.H. community.
I find this to be an abuse of power, a transparently malicious case to build against students just as deserving as any others and overall reprehensible behavior from the representative, who has made sure to pollute the social media ecosystem with consistent petulant whining about the sanctity of making sure what is ours remains ours, lest we be confronted by the terrifying prospect that other cultures exist and have differing viewpoints than hegemonic white N.H.
I think UNH’s statement does an acceptable enough job of putting up a wall between the likes of Sweeney and the institution’s students who may be at risk of getting targeted by the xenophobic hate machine. With that said, the university’s willingness to publicly put focus on the fact that it accepts 85% of N.H. applicants is conceding an important point to Sweeney in the court of public opinion. The number should not matter; the university is accepting students on the basis of their achievement and potential, rather than their place of origin.
In the WMUR article about the statement, some UNH students voiced the fact that they feel their international classmates and colleagues serve to make the campus a better and brighter place. I know I, while having been born and raised in N.H., can confidently say the same in regards to the international members of our community at KSC. Sweeney is not pursuing the best interests of myself and my fellow N.H. students; he is squashing our voices, too, by using us as scapegoats for his hateful agenda.
I hope all of Sweeney’s bluster will burn out and blow away, but in the meantime we need to rise to the challenge of being louder than him in our support for our colleagues, professors, friends, loved ones and all members of our communities who come from diverse backgrounds. Do not let politicians with bones to pick tell you who your enemies nor allies are.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
