The Behrend Beacon
Legislator wants
foreign students
by Becky Bartindale
Knight Ridder Newspapers
A Republican lawmaker said Tuesday
he will introduce a bill requiring Cali
fornia colleges and universities to
promptly report to the INS on interna
tional students who are accepted but do
not show up for school.
Assemblyman Russ Bogh, R-Yucapia,
said his proposal is an attempt to close
a potential loophole for terrorists. His
comment followed a hearing by the As
sembly Higher Education Committee on
student visas at Stanford University.
"We're not trying to stop international
students from coming to this country,"
said Bogh, vice-chairman of the educa
tion committee. "We just want to make
sure people don't use their visas to com
mit fraud or do harm to the United
USA claims sex bragging
rights, survey says
by Corky Siemaszko
New York Daily News
NEW YORK - The United States is a
sexual superpower - or so it says.
Americans say they make love more of
ten - and with more partners - than any
other nationality, according to a sur
vey by condom manufacturer Durex
SSL International. They also claim
to start having sex at a younger age
- 16 - than lovers in other countries.
But are these simply bedroom
boasts or scientific-facts?
Durex said 18,500 people in 28
countries filled out a written ques
tionnaire. Respondents in the annual
poll ranged in age from 16 to 55, and
their answers showed the world was
having more sex and starting earlier
than ever before, the company said.
The survey - conducted in May
and to be published ahead of World
AIDS Day on Saturday - showed re
spondents averaging sex 97 times a
year, up from 96 last year. But no
body bested Americans, according
to Americans.
The Americans questioned said they
averaged sex 124 times a year (down from
132 in 2000), with roughly 14 different
partners (up from 12 in 2000).
The Greeks claimed to have had sex the
second most frequently - 117 times - fol
lowed by Croatians, South Africans and
New Zealanders.
Meanwhile, the world's most celebrated
lovers - the Italians and French - were in
States."
The focus on student visas has inten
sified since the terrorist attack on
America Sept. 11. One of the suspected
terrorists, Hani Flanjour, entered the
country on a student visa but never
showed up for school.
U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Cali
fornia, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massa
chusetts, both have proposed legislation
to more tightly regulate student visas as
well as reporting on foreign students
studying here.
At the hearing, several students said
they feared a climate of hostility is de
veloping toward foreign students in the
United States and that it could drive the
brightest international students to other
countries.
Felipe Santos, a student from Portu
gal who is pursuing a doctorate degree
sixth and seventh place, on par with the
less-celebrated Russians and Israelis.
By contrast, the Japanese were at the
bottom in terms of frequency, averaging
36 sexual encounters a year. But the Japa
nese appear to like variety, because they
claimed to have 10.2 partners per year.
Americans say
they make love
more often -
and with more
partners - than
any other na
tionality...
Respondents from the world's most
populous nation ranked at the bottom in
terms of average number of partners (2.1).
At age 22 (the survey average was 18),
the Chinese were the oldest of the groups
questioned to lose their virginity. World
wide, the survey found that 60 percent
said they had sex at least once a week and
4 percent claimed to make love daily. One
in 10 admitted they were virgins.
NATIONAL
CAMPUS NEWS
Friday, December 7, 2001
schools to report
who don't attend class
at Stanford, said most students support
a proposed electronic tracking system
the Immigration and Naturalization Ser
vice is developing to keep up-to-date in
formation on foreign students.
But Santos said it would be going too
far if the government began monitoring
the individual courses a student takes
or what kind of research he is doing. "It
means we are under suspicion and seen
as a potential terrorist," he said.
At the hearing, speakers from the Uni
versity of California, California State
University and the community college
system spoke of the benefits interna
tional students bring to California, in
cluding the estimated $750 million they
contribute directly to the state's public
and private colleges and universities.
California is the largest recipient of for
eign students in the United States.
Leading a
by Michael Vitez
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Catherine Bath's transformation began two
years ago, when her son, Raheem, died at Duke
University Medical Center.
He was 20, a graduate of Lower Merton High
School with SAT scores of 1440, a junior at Duke
double-majoring in electrical engineering and
economics.
But on Nov. 15,1999, Raheem got drunk with
friends at an off - campus bar, passed out in his
bed and vomited. He inhaled his vomit and never
even knew it. Infection ravaged his lungs,
leading to pneumonia. On Nov. 27, he died.
"I honestly believed God would protect my
son, that nothing like this could happen to him,"
Catherine Bath said recently in her King of
Prussia, Pa., office. "But it did."
Since her son's death, she has evolved from a
grieving mother into a crusader. She believes
the alcohol industry and American culture killed
her son.
And she travels the country - she had just
returned from a conference in Chicago with high
school administrators, counselors, parents and
students - preaching that message.
"I consider the alcohol industry to be drug
pushers," she said. "It's legal what they're doing.
But they're still pushers. My son was raised in a
non-drinking home. He wasn't strong enough
to push back his peer group.
"The popular culture is sucking these kids in,"
she said. She opened an issue of Rolling Stone
that had Britney Spears on the cover - and, she
said, more than a dozen full-page ads inside for
alcohol.
"There's a bull's-eye on the backs of 16-year
old boys. I say remove the advertising that
subliminally programs our kids to think they're
going to get something good from drinking."
Catherine Bath had worked selling
information-systems software. But one day at
the end of January, a year after Raheem's death,
she simply could not make another sales call.
She drove home, sat in her living room and
prayed.
"Within 10 seconds," she said, "Connie
Clery's face came in front of me."
Constance Clery and her husband, Howard,
started a nonprofit organization called Security
on Campus 15 years ago after their only
daughter, Jeanne, was sexually assaulted and
murdered at Lehigh University. Their
organization was instrumental in the passage of
the federal Campus Security Act, which requires
colleges to accurately report crime statistics.
Catherine had met the Clerys after appearing
in a documentary about the loss of their children.
She bonded with Constance. That morning
Catherine picked up the phone and called her.
"I'm grateful for having this platform,"
Catherine said of the Clerys' group, for which
she now works. "It gives me even more
credibility than just being a bereaved mother."
At her office last week she was weary and
sick. She'd worn herself out over the weekend
in Chicago, telling her story to parents and
students.
She's spoken publicly only a dozen times.
She'd like to do more, but opening up her heart,
reliving the loss of Raheem, is so painful.
"But it usually does touch kids," she said. "After
my workshops, I usually get hugs. People come
up to me and thank me for sharing."
Tom and Catherine Bath met and married
while at the University of Illinois. They came of
age in the late '6os, and like many of their
generation, were disenchanted with American
life. They experimented with drugs and alcohol,
but not on the level of kids today, Catherine said.
They went on a spiritual journey that led them
Mary Jacob, director of the Office of
International Students and Scholars at
the University of California-Santa Bar
bara, said the 9,000 international stu
dents make up about 5 percent of the
system's enrollment but contribute 17
percent of its revenue by paying higher
out-of-state tuition and fees.
Much of the discussion focused on the
INS' new electronic tracking system,
the Student and Exchange Visitor and
Information Program (SEVIS 1, which
would provide inhumation on foreign
students to colleges, the State Depart
ment and the INS.
The system is supposed to he up and
running nationally by January 2003, but
many of those ‘‘, ho spoke expressed
skepticism about the INS' ability to
meet that timetable.
Terry Hartle, senior vice president ot
crusade for sobriety
to Philadelphia in 1975, to study with Sheikh
M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a native of Sri
Lanka. He was the spiritual leader of an
international Muslim fellowship still
headquartered at a mosque in Philadelphia's
Overbrook section.
"I wanted to know the reality of God,"
Catherine said, "and I wasn't getting it from the
Christian tradition."
They joined the fellowship and Tom, a
construction project manager in Philadelphia,
sent their three children to public school. At
Lower Merton, Raheem ran track, played golf,
and organized the senior prom.
Tom and Catherine, both 49, say they have
not had a drink of alcohol in 25 years, and they
raised their children in a home without alcohol.
Even so, Raheem drank some while in high
school. When his parents caught him, they
reprimanded him but tried to give him some
latitude. They never thought he behaved
irresponsibly, or drove drunk, or drank
excessively.
"I knew he drank," his mother said soon after
his death. "I thought it was a phase. I was waiting
for him to get through it. Not for a moment, I
never thought I would lose my son."
Now she wishes she had been much striae'
Raheem had three close pals at Duke, "the
four amigos" they were called, who water-skied
and studied and lifted weights and double-dated
and just hung out in one another's room, listening
to techno music and playing computer games.
Raheem would also go out, like many of his
PHOTO BY APRIL SAUL/PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Catherine Bath with her son, Raheem, at his high school graduation in 1997. Two
years later, Raheem died after getting drunk and passing out. Raheem developed
lung infections after inhaling vomit as he slept which led to his death twelve days
later.
behrcolls@aol.com
the American Council for Education,
said the higher education community
supports the idea behind the SEVIS sys
tem as the best way to weed out those
who would abuse the student visa sys
tem.
He said the INS must work closely
with colleges and universities to de
velop a system works for all parties. "A
poorly designed information system or
one that is badly implemented will only
create headaches." he said.
Hartle said Bogh's proposal sounds
like "a meaningless requirement that
won't accomplish much" because it will
"produce information the INS doesn't
want and is not in a position to use."
peers, and drink 15 beers and pass out.
Ironically, said Raheem's closest friends, by
the time he died, in November of his junior year,
he was well beyond the worst partying stage.
He was calming down, drinking less often,
studying much harder.
"Raheem was not atypical," insisted Adam
Carson, his close friend from high school and
college, interviewed shortly after Raheem's
death. "He was not anything different than most
college students.
"Freshman year, we did party a lot, but, like,
a lot of people do."
Tom and Catherine Bath last year moved out
of Narberth, Pa. "We just didn't want to be in
that house anymore," she said.
They bought a smaller house near the river in
Norristown.
Their older daughter, Jahje, is married and
lives in Houston. Aleema, their younger
daughter, is a sophomore at Duke. Catherine was
down there last spring to speak to Raheem's
graduating class. Her speech is online at
www.campussatety.org.
"I consider it almost as a gift to be able to dcx.
something and effect some change," she said
last week. "It gives my tragic loss a reason. •
"Many days I feel like a salmon swimming
up stream, - she added. "But you know those
salmon. They keep swimming."
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