Could you pack your life in three boxes? 

That is the impossible challenge the University demands from its low-income international student community. In partnership with Physical Plant, the Office of Student Affairs launched a pilot program over the summer of 2023, advertised as free on-campus summer storage for all students, domestic and international, whose family contribution is less than $7,000. 

Diana Zhumalieva ’24, a student from Kyrgyzstan, who is the co-chair of the First-Generation, Low-Income Advisory Board (FGLIAB) and a student activist, summed up the situation of low-income international students at the University. 

“In terms of Wesleyan policy, I think they’re the most fucked,” Zhumalieva said. 

For low-income international students, finding storage during school breaks is just one of the many burdens that fall through the cracks in the University’s support system. As low-income students, it’s difficult to find the money to pay for a private storage unit. Most international students don’t have any family or friends in the area who can offer free storage. In this uniquely vulnerable position, the extent to which these students are left on their own, struggling in a foreign country, depends largely on University policy. 

When Julia Kulchytska ’24, a Ukrainian student, first learned about the new storage initiative, she was excited to finally see the University address the issue. However, the true scope of the program when it was implemented did not align with the initial FGLIAB proposal. 

“Storage was always a mess,” Kulchytska said. “And then suddenly [I found out] that I didn’t have to pay for storage, so it’s a lot of money I’d be keeping, which would be really good. But then, it was [limited to] five boxes, which would’ve been manageable for me. But then, [it became] three boxes, which meant that I had to divide my stuff. So I knew that I still needed to ask someone to keep the rest of my things.” 

Indeed, the on-campus storage pilot program eventually limited students to only three items per person. That could mean three medium-sized boxes, or two boxes and a microwave, or two boxes and a mini fridge; mirrors, furniture, or mattress toppers were not allowed. Every low-income international student interviewed for this article stated that three boxes/items did not even come close to addressing their needs. 

“You [have to] buy things here,” Andy Lisheng ’25, a Freeman Asian Scholar, said. “It’s not like back at home in Singapore where you can just wear two shirts. The weather here changes, you have to have winter coats…even if you are trying to be minimalistic.” 

All students also need bedding and appliances for their unequipped dorm rooms and books for their classes, and some want to keep mementos of their family and friends.

“Achieving the feeling of home requires a lot of items, which [takes] more than 3 boxes for storage,” an anonymous member of the class of 2025 wrote in an email to The Argus.  

For years, before the implementation of the free storage program, low-income international students have scrambled to find storage over long breaks. So, how did these students deal with the issue of storage before the pilot program, and what did they do with their over-the-limit belongings this past summer? 

Yehor Mishchyriak ’26, a Ukrainian student, kept his items with a friend who lives in Middletown. Another student found their third cousins in Connecticut and stored their belongings there. But those situations are relatively rare and lucky among low-income international students. 

“I have signed up for the storage program and am planning to ask some friends to store some things for me,” the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said. “I also have to consider getting rid of some things and hope to get them back during the waste not sale.” 

Overall, the lack of support left many low-income international students needing to ask everyone and anyone they knew for help, including friends, professors, and University staff. This entailed disclosing personal information about financial situations to professors and work supervisors and hoping that someone would take enough pity on them to offer up their free basement. In Zhumalieva’s case, another student connected her to a now-former staff member who offered to store her belongings two years ago.

“I didn’t want to bring too many boxes, because I didn’t want to burden her,” Zhumalieva said. “So I ended up doing a very thorough sorting of all my stuff, donating or throwing away like half of it. The rest…I left in her basement. She told me that she was helping other international students as well. So I wasn’t the only person, which is just insane. This woman, obviously, is not getting paid for that. That’s not her job.” 

The Office of Student Affairs commented that it could not have foreseen the student demand when it initially set out to implement the summer storage program. Out of around 500 eligible students, 122 chose to use the pilot storage program last summer.  

While the Office of Student Affairs acknowledges that the program in its current form does not meet the needs of all students, they maintain that the rooms coordinated by Physical Plant for the program are not large enough to accommodate more than the three items per person. Despite the ample space the University has access to during the summer, such as empty dorms and classrooms, the Office of Student Affairs and Physical Plant limited the storage program only to the Long Lane location. Faculty and staff have reported that the University has additional storage, including for unused furniture, that was not included in the pilot program.

“The number of items that each student can store is based on the finite storage space that we have available at Long Lane,” Vice President for Student Affairs Dean Mike Whaley wrote in an email to The Argus. “The available rooms were filled to capacity last summer.”

The program does not currently differentiate between domestic and international students, or prioritize low-income international students without a local support system who may need to store more items. 

“This is an interesting idea but doing so is not possible with current space constraints and would be logistically complicated to implement,” Whaley wrote.  

Out of over 3,000 undergraduates who attend the University, only 70 are low-income international students with a financial contribution of less than $7,000. Considering that not all students return home during breaks—in fact, several students The Argus spoke with reported they always stay on campus during breaks for financial reasons, due to the cost of storage and airfare—the number of students in the highest need of free storage at any given moment dwindles to fewer than 40. 

The University’s endowment for 2020 was $1.13 billion. The total operating expenses in 2022 were $250.8 million. The recent “This Is Not a Campaign” campaign has already raised over $350 million. Meanwhile, the summer storage pilot program’s budget was $10,000. 

Divided between the 122 students who stored items this summer, the budget allotted $82 for each student participant. A different solution granting students in need money to pay for storage through the Financial Aid Office would be much more costly. However, the University did not spend the budgeted money on renting the storage space this summer, as it was provided by Physical Plant, nor on the salaries of staff coordinating the program. 

“[The $10,000 went to] storage supplies (boxes, tape, etc.) and shuttle to/from student residences and Long Lane,” Whaley wrote. “We provided shuttle service to and from the storage area for students who do not have access to vehicles to move their belongings.” 

Last spring, each student could sign up for a time slot on one of two days to be picked up with their three items at their campus residency by a University shuttle and driven to the Long Lane storage units. Both pickup dates occurred before Commencement. 

“The expectation was that we pack everything up, give it to storage, and then still, for that week we’re on campus [working or saying goodbye to friends], we don’t have anything,” Zhumalieva said.

Despite the high ticket price for resources so limited in scope, Executive Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs Jill Mattus announced that supplies for storing items such as boxes and tape ran out in around an hour, and some students reported that the shuttle never arrived to pick them up. 

In our interviews and a feedback survey by the FGLIAB, students storing items with the program reported multiple issues–for both the spring drop-off and the fall retrieval–with the inflexibility of the dates, the unresponsiveness of the coordinators, and understaffing.

This spring, Zhumalieva waited for the shuttle at her scheduled time with a friend for almost two hours, hungry because the delay meant they missed lunch. She tried calling and emailing Mattus, her contact at the Office of Student Affairs, but only received one brief response saying the shuttle was running late. 

“[Student Affairs] would not give us the number for us to call the drivers and communicate to them directly,” Zhumalieva said. “Then they stopped replying to my emails.”

The shuttle never arrived, so she eventually had to call a friend with a car to drive her to the Long Lane storage facility.  

Similarly, Kulchytska, who also participated in the program, waited for her scheduled shuttle for one hour and 15 minutes. Mattus, the only program coordinator whose phone number she had, never picked up, even after Kulchytska called multiple times. 

Another student from the class of 2025 recalled waiting this spring, first alone, then with a friend, and then leaving to go to an important meeting while their friend stood in for them. The shuttle eventually came over three hours after the scheduled pickup time. 

In the fall, students were informed on Aug. 25 that their belongings would be available for retrieval on Sept. 1, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  and the University would provide a one-way shuttle from Long Lane to student residences. For many international, low-income students who participated in the program, suddenly arranging an earlier flight back to the University to pick up their stored items was out of the question. 

“In the email, [Mattus] asked us to contact her before if we are not able to arrive on…September 1, which I did, and I never heard back from her. Then I emailed her again, and again, and again, and still she didn’t reply,” Mishchyriak said. “Even when I was on campus, when I arrived, I kept on emailing her. She didn’t respond…and when I went to ResLife, one of the women there [Director of Residential Life Maureen Isleib] was able to email Jill. And then she responded immediately to her email. Not mine.”  

Out of desperation, he tried calling the Office of Public Safety, saying he needed them to open the storage and that he would transport his things by himself, but the office said it was not able to help.

“The only person that was able to do that was [Mattus], and she was off campus on September 2,” he said. “She came back five days later.”  

My (Ada) personal story is very similar to those of the other students. My first year, I had to work for two months during the summer to be able to afford private storage and the summer minimum contribution. This summer, I participated in the pilot storage program, but I still had to store most of my belongings at the house of a kind professor. Similar to Mishchyriak, I arrived on campus one day too late for the pickup time slot. Despite emailing Mattus several times, I was unable to access my belongings for the first week of classes.

This semester, as I have been preparing for my spring study abroad program in Germany—a decision made based on the University’s promise of financial accessibility—I hit a bureaucratic wall on the issue of storage.

I’ve now spent over two months trying to communicate with the University administration. When I came to see Mattus in-person to schedule a meeting with Whaley, she dismissed me by saying that he is a very busy man. She proceeded to refuse to schedule a meeting with him for me at any point in the future and physically walked me out of her office and into the office of Dean for the Class of 2025 Kelly Dunn, although Dunn had referred me to Mattus in the first place. Mattus did not respond to a request for comment for this article and Dunn declined to comment.

In the first email response I received from Whaley, he wished me an exciting study abroad and ignored my concerns about storage, reiterating the limit of three items. 

The extreme dysfunctionality of the summer storage pilot program and my personal story with the Office of Student Affairs are not isolated incidents. From the moment they enter the University to the moment they leave, low-income international students are ignored by the administration and denied access to the University’s considerable financial resources. Despite being on full financial aid—which in practice fails to cover all the costs associated with higher education—low-income students must work to cover their personal expenses and part of their tuition, as the minimum student contribution is $600 per semester. 

“Semester breaks are not for rest but an opportunity to work extra shifts to take full advantage of the 40 hours we are allowed to work then,” the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said. 

This usually means that while other students may return from breaks well rested, many low-income international students already feel burnt out before classes even begin.

“My three jobs are practically clubs for other students,” Kulchytska said.

At the same time, because of the student minimum contribution, storage, and airfare costs, many low-income international students cannot return home for the breaks at all. 

“[I’ve been able to go back home] only once,” Lisheng said. “It took almost $1,500…. I wish there was a way in which I could go home without worrying about money.”

Due to the costs, some students stay at the University for all four years, unable to see their family and friends, and miss out on important events in the lives of their loved ones. Those with safe homes lucky enough to go back once in a while still find themselves missing their families.

“Unfortunately, I can go only during the summer,” Mishchyriak, whose parents are now staying in Germany as refugees from the war in Ukraine, said. “I would happily go for the winter break…but that would be just way too expensive.” 

Zhumalieva described a heartbreaking scene at the airport before she left for her first year, as she struggled to speak with her parents about the enormity of the step she was about to take.

“I was not sure how many years I’m leaving for, and of course that’s hard when you’re just 18,” Zhumalieva said. “I left my younger brother, knowing that I would miss out on him growing up.” 

These types of emotional and financial difficulties are ever present in the lives of low-income international students, and the current University programs fail to provide the extensive support services needed to fully relieve this burden.

“The Student Affairs Office is and has been accessible and responsive to students with respect to this and other support programs,” Whaley said. “I think that Wesleyan takes seriously the needs of our FGLI students.”

Low-income international students, myself included, encounter seemingly endless problems regarding communication with the University’s administration. Denied meetings and waiting indefinitely for responses to our emails and phone calls, we feel ignored and disappointed by the lack of support and attention to our problems. The pilot summer storage program, in particular, is completely inadequate. Meeting only some student needs or providing minimal support is not enough; as long as the full needs of low-income international students are not met, we will continue to be left on our own, struggling to find storage for ourselves and resorting to faculty and staff, who are burdened with this responsibility. 

The University should radically change its summer storage pilot program to fully meet the needs of low-income international students, either by increasing the number of items permitted, or giving direct financial grants for off-campus storage. The Wesleyan Democratic Socialists, FGLI Advisory Board, International Student Advisory Board, Arab Student Association, and Thai Student Association support this proposal. 

“I don’t want to believe anyone is doing it on purpose,” Zhumalieva said. “I think people genuinely want to help and they’re trying. I don’t think [the administration] is sitting behind the walls [saying], ‘Oh, I’m gonna fuck this over for students.’ I think they just don’t know how to work together and communicate with each other. There is something going wrong here.”

 

Correction note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there are 86 low-income international students with a financial contribution of less than $7,000 at the University. The article has been updated to reflect the correct number, which is 70.

Adrianna Nowakowska can be reached at anowakowska@wesleyan.edu. 

Ella Henn can be reached at ehenn@wesleyan.edu.