A Digital Swap Meet for UCLA International Students?

Under new federal rules - under litigation - international students have to take some in-person courses to stay in the U.S. But there won't be many such courses. A digital solution is being developed. From The Lily:

Sumana Kaluvai, 22, who graduated from UCLA last year, also heard the news on Monday. She realized thousands of international students at UCLA and throughout the country had just had their lives upended: They were all facing potential deportation.

Kaluvai now works at a biotech company, but still maintains a Facebook group for international students to help navigate school and visa logistics. Caught in green card limbo for years, she attended her final year at UCLA on a student visa despite having spent most of her life in America. Her inbox blew up with questions from students and parents about what to do in the fall.

She had no answers.

After several hours, she thought about her experience at UCLA and what she and her friends would do if they absolutely needed to take a class within a certain quarter or as a graduation requirement.

“We would ask around to see if any of our friends had a spot that they didn’t need. … It used to be dire circumstances. And this is the worst version of that, so I decided, why don’t we do the same thing?” Kaluvai said.

She made a Google doc to connect international students to American students to see if they could swap classes — an online class for an in-person lab class or workshop.

“Just as a temporary fix. This is not the end solution,” Kaluvai said.

She started the document at 9 p.m. on Monday. When she woke up on Tuesday, it had “blown up,” and 24 hours later, it had over one million views.

Within a couple of days, she teamed up with other groups like Community Equity and San Jose Strong, who helped her spread the word.

Soon the lists got swamped with traffic, including nasty comments and harassment by trolls. The group leaders locked the documents and are instead building out a website to connect people...

Full story at https://www.thelily.com/class-swaps-could-save-international-students-from-deportation-this-woman-made-it-happen-with-a-google-doc/

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Note: As noted above, there aren't many in-person courses in the fall listings and most of those are special purpose courses which a random international student probably wouldn't be eligible to take. UCLA could produce some kind of general course - perhaps held in an outdoor facility with plenty of room for social distancing - in which international students could enroll.