Vlad Darie Dobru (Romania)

When I arrived at Dartmouth the fall of my freshman year, I immediately noticed how foreign students stood out in our predominantly American campus. International students form, and always will form, a very close-knit community at Dartmouth by simple virtue of the binding experience of having to adapt and thrive in a new country.

When elections for International Student Association’s executive board were announced in February ’07, I saw the unique opportunity to contribute to the community that had become my new home at Dartmouth. I quickly persuaded a group of friends to run for the positions we thought suited their particular talents best: Anna Qi ’10 for Social Affairs VP, Kevin Mwenda ’10 for VP for Policy, Kevin Jackson ’10 for Treasurer, Imani Brown ’10 for Director of Communications and Advertising. We wanted the international community to have an advocacy group and a support network that could tackle issues affecting international students. We envisioned an organization that would plan the social events that international students longed for, events which would make the international community more prominent on campus.

We were an ambitious group of freshmen with big plans for ISA. At first, we struggled, but quickly learned. Our intention was to establish big-scale campus events that could become traditions. We hoped to lay a solid foundation on which the future executive teams could build easily and quickly. As such, in the fall of 2007, we put together a show called “Kaleidoscope: Experience the Colors of the World,” which featured a national-costume fashion show, choreography, musical and theatrical performances by international students, and a sit-down dinner. In the winter of 2008, ISA organized “The Mid-Winter Night’s Dream Ball,” which was attended by 160 students, administrators, faculty, and President Wright. The formal six-hour event was held at the Hanover Inn and included a four-course buffet, two a cappella performances, a student band and two popular student DJs.

One of the issues that began to galvanize the international community in the winter of 07 was need-blind admission for international students. At the time, because Dartmouth took international students’ ability to pay into consideration, the College could not recruit the foreign students with the most potential. We quickly decided to throw the whole weight of the organization behind this cause and to lobby the administration for its implementation. Finally, all candidates in the 2008 Trustee Elections were asked by Inter-Community Council to state their stance on universal need-blind admissions. All members were in favor. In January ’08, Dartmouth announced the phenomenal news that it was extending its need-blind admissions policy to all students. We will be forever indebted to President James Wright, Maria Laskaris, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, and Stephen Silver, for their efforts to make our dream a reality.

ISA has been a defining chapter of my experience at Dartmouth, allowing me to grow in ways I never thought possible. I am immensely proud of what ISA is today.

Kevin F. Jackson (Venezuela)

I did not know what ISA stood for when I first arrived at Dartmouth in the fall of 2006. The International Student Association was hardly visible on campus and comprised of very few active members. Nonetheless, I became Treasurer in winter 2007. In spring 2008, I took over as ISA President. By then, we had successfully organized great events, which were part of our strategy to carry out at least one big project each term, and were followed by the World Food Festival that same spring.

By fall, our executive board had grown from four officers to more than ten, all of them bright and committed students. This spring we look forward to the first ever International Week, which we hope will showcase all that the international community has to offer. Our World Food Festival has been transformed into “Cruise the World,” an international fair with food, activities and performances organized with the support of more than ten different campus groups.

Since Vlad’s initiative to bring us all together in 2007, the executive committee members have become experts at carrying out international events on campus. More importantly, we have also managed to establish ISA as a solid student organization. We’ve secured yearly funding from the Dickey Center and re-launched this newsletter that you are now holding in your hands. We have also designed a revamped website (www.dartmouth.edu/~isa). We now look forward to creating the Dartmouth International Alumni Network in the near future (see alumni article).

I strongly believe that in this increasingly globalized world it is important to connect with people from all over the globe. On a local scale, ISA aims to connect internationals students with each other and with the campus as a whole, and I hope our work during these last two years has fulfilled that mission.