International students can no longer work at the student paper at Purdue University after the administration made a host of changes to distance itself from the outlet.
Over the summer, Purdue told the Exponent that it should omit the university’s name, would no longer help distribute the biweekly paper on campus and pulled Exponent staff’s ability to purchase parking passes at a campus garage. As part of those changes, the university said it would no longer recognize an expired but long-honored facilities contract with the 135-year-old publication.
Without that contract, Exponent leadership said the paper was no longer a contracted vendor with the university, and thus, it could not employ international students, who are bound to specific work requirements. Students at the paper are paid for their work.
“With this consequence as well, it feels like a further blow to us that international students’ voices are being quieted,” Editor-in-Chief Olivia Mapes said.
Purdue is a top destination for international students as one of the highest-enrolling campuses for such students in the country. In fall 2024, the university enrolled over 10,000 international students, making up 17.2% of the student body.
Publisher Kyle Charters said Exponent leaders want to be able to employ international students and are working through potential opportunities that could enable them to come back on board. They are evaluating whether volunteers or course-related interns are options. He said newspaper leaders have not been in conversation with the university since the summer.
After Exponent discovered the contract’s implication for international students, it told four current staffers and about eight to 10 prospective students that they could not work for the publication.
“We’re going to comply with that because we don’t want to endanger the legal status of international students at Purdue,” Charters said. “It seems like our hands are a little bit tied at the moment.”
In a June statement, the university said the Exponent is a private business and Purdue doesn’t provide such support to other media organizations as it had been providing the Exponent.
“The Exponent is, in its own words, ‘jurisdictionally and financially independent of the university.’ Purdue neither knows of nor controls an outside business’ employment practices,” Purdue spokesperson Trevor Peters said in a Sept. 23 statement. “Even the former contract with the Exponent, which expired in 2014, did not have any provision on employment of international students.”
The Exponent provided IndyStar with an F-1 visa form and a screenshot of a list of campus employers from the Purdue international student office website as examples of their previous status as a recognized campus employer. The newspaper was a vendor “providing services to Purdue University students, staff, and affiliates,” the visa form reads.
While the initial contact didn’t include that specific language, Charters said the Exponent and the university decided to recognize the Exponent as a contracted vendor in an agreement struck after the contract had expired. When the university chose to no longer recognize the contract, Charters said that after-the-fact agreement was also included.
Students with a valid F-1 visa status can work up to 20 hours per week. However, to work off-campus, students must obtain additional visa permission and requirements, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
When Purdue treated the Exponent as a contracted vendor, international students could work for the publication as if it were an on-campus job. It is an independent, student-led newspaper with no editorial or financial ties to the university.
Without international students, Mapes said, the newsroom is losing their experiences and perspective of how they cover campus news. Not only are they losing talent, she said, but those students are being denied a leanring opportunity.
“It’s been just really upsetting because they have been really important,” she said. “It was just tragic because they were some of the people who were most excited about joining the Exponent. … It’s just a loss for the Exponent.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: International students can’t work at student newspaper after Purdue cuts ties
Reporting by Cate Charron, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
