When I first arrived in the UK to study, I was the first in my family to ever go to university.
It was a massive deal for everyone back home, but once I got here, it felt incredibly isolating.
International students stuck with people who looked like them, and home students did exactly the same. We were walking the same hallways but living in two different worlds.
When I was elected as VP Welfare at Northumbria Students’ Union, I knew I wanted to change that. I didn’t just want to “support” students through the usual visa and housing stress, I wanted to celebrate international students.
Give me a reason
I was not alone in this. I teamed up with our VP Activities, who had faced those same challenges. We realised that if we wanted to bridge the gap, we had to stop expecting students to “mix” and start giving them a reason to show up.
We decided to focus on what brings people together: food, music, fashion, and safe, non-judgmental spaces.
For international students, food, music, and fashion do several things. They remind them of home and bring comfort, provide a common language for each other, but also give them a reason and mechanism to engage with other student communities.
We all eat, listen to music, and follow fashion, but also that national element brings a sense of pride and a lens to help others understand your country.
For many international students reading the press the UK can seem a hostile space where we are unwanted, and so exposing ourselves can be an act of bravery when it shouldn’t need to be – safe, non-judgmental spaces are one way to combat this.
It’s a sell-out
Planning a new event is never easy. We had to secure funding, bring international societies on board, source food, traditional clothes, and jewellery. It became a nightmare of logistics and costs just to represent different cultures for one night.
The event was a multicultural celebration designed to break down the silos we often see on campus, where international and home students tend to stay in their own separate worlds.
Our tickets sold fast, and even after expanding our capacity, we had to turn people away. And when the music finally went off at 11 pm, the crowd was quite unhappy – they wanted to keep going.
That is the power of the right atmosphere, it turns an isolated student into someone who finally feels they belong. There was something special about seeing the vibrant colours and hearing the music of our global community right in the heart of Newcastle.
It wasn’t just a win for the SU. It changed the energy of the whole campus.
The after party
While the night was about joy, the impact stretched into the classroom.
Social belonging acts as a foundation for academic risk-taking. When a student feels they are a human being with a story rather than just a unit of revenue, they are much more likely to speak up in seminars, collaborate with peers from different backgrounds, and seek help when they are struggling.
A student who feels like an outsider spends a significant amount of mental energy navigating that loneliness. By universities and SUs supporting their belonging on campus, we free up that mental space for them to focus entirely on their studies.
And these events create the initial spark for friendships that turn into study groups. A ticket to a cultural event can be the starting point for a peer-support network that lasts the entire degree.
We know that a student who feels they belong is a student who stays, performs better, and speaks highly of their institution.
By bridging these gaps, we are not just throwing a party; we are supporting the university’s broader goals for student retention and satisfaction. When international students feel seen, it reflects in the culture of the entire campus and, ultimately, in the data that defines our sector’s success.
And this feels urgent right now. With increasingly strict immigration policies and rhetoric, conversations about international students have focused on recruitment and income and less on belonging and mattering.
It is exhausting to be seen as a financial solution to a funding crisis instead of a human with a story, with hopes and ambitions.
Not a financial fix
If we want to stop seeing international students as just a financial fix for a funding crisis, we have to change the policies that keep them on the sidelines.
Right now, the national press ignores the life and vibrancy we bring to campus. But if we are only valued for our tuition, then it’s no surprise when the campus culture doesn’t reflect our ambitions or stories.
To move past this, we need to embed some real changes into the university’s strategies.
Institutions need to move from consultation to co-creation, designing policies, curricula, and student support with international students.
By having a better grasp of the data, universities can understand the regions they recruit from and ensure support matches their lived experience.
Recruitment targets can’t be the only KPI. Belonging and integration need to be evaluated so institutions start measuring what matters.
One thing institutions could consider is ring-fencing a portion of fees for community building and cultural infrastructure so it’s considered a core cost, not just a nice-to-have.
And finally, to make internationalisation at home a permanent reality, we need a formal handover process that passes institutional knowledge down. This keeps the support proactive and ensures that the vibrant, global heartbeat of the campus is something every student benefits from.
Some of these recommendations are big pieces of work, but institutions can start small. The university canteen menu could reflect food from international students’ home regions. Global playlists could feature in social spaces, and dedicated hubs could display traditional clothes and art.
We are not just units of revenue, but the heartbeat of the campus. And through our event, we showed home students that they do not have to leave Newcastle to experience the world.
The relay race
A one-year win isn’t enough. The event benefits those students who turn up on the day, but it needs to be part of a longer-term strategy.
By working so closely together on the ground, we have embedded this into the SU’s calendar. It’s a relay race – it started with two officers last year, I grew it as President alongside the officer team, and now I’m passing the torch to the next team to lead it next year.
Whether or not there is an international officer in the lead role, this “massive shutdown” is here to stay.
Celebrating your international community can’t be a “nice-to-have,” it must be a core part of your offer.
If we want to win the global race for talent, we have to stop treating international integration like a problem to be solved and start treating it as a culture to be celebrated.
These are students who just want to feel at home, and SUs have a duty to make that happen.
