枪支暴力吓退国际学生？专家：人身安全问题成赴美留学最大担忧

美国校园枪击案频发引发国际关注。随着枪支暴力事件接连不断地威胁着美国校园安全，越来越多国际学生对赴美留学的安全性感到担忧。

据高等教育内幕 （Inside Higher Ed）网站4月10日报道，对大规模枪击事件的担忧已经成为影响国际学生赴美留学的主要因素。国际教育研究和战略独立顾问拉吉卡·班达里表示，近年来，枪支暴力和人身安全问题成为赴美留学最突出的弊端。人身安全也是许多身在美国的国际学生关心的问题。一项调查显示，四分之一在美留学生对其所在学校的枪支暴力问题感到担忧。文章称，对许多人来说，尽管赴美留学仍然值得冒险，但专家表示每起枪击事件都会让招生变得更加困难。文章摘编如下：

当密歇根州立大学二年级博士留学生徐振阳第一次收到校园内有枪手出没的警报时，他几乎没有在意。

When Zhenyang Xu, a second-year international Ph.D. student at Michigan State University, first received the alert that there was an active shooter on campus, he barely thought twice about it.

“我看着手机，只是想，‘哦，好吧。下一个信息’。这种消息在这里太平常了，我们收到过太多关于枪击事件的消息，以至于在更多警报出现之前，我完全没有注意到这次发生的事件不同寻常、更加可怕。”

“I looked at my phone and I just thought,‘Oh, OK. Another one,’” he said.“It’s so normalized here and we get so much news about shootings that I didn’t notice it was something entirely different and scarier until more alerts started coming.”

2月13日，密歇根州立大学发生校园枪击事件，三名学生遇害，另有五人受伤，其中包括两名中国留学生。20岁的郝同学在这次枪击事件中受伤，导致颈部以下瘫痪。徐振阳说，这场悲剧是一个警钟、一个极具冲击力的提醒，提醒他那些曾经在新闻里看到的枪支暴力问题在美国是一个可怕的现实。

Three students were killed and another five were injured in the Feb. 13 shooting at Michigan State, including two international students from Xu’s native China—one of whom, 20-year-old John Hao, was paralyzed from the neck down. Xu said the tragedy was a wake-up call, an all-too-visceral reminder that the plague of gun violence he’d read about in the news was a frightening reality in the country where he’d chosen to study.

对大规模枪击事件的担忧已成为影响国际学生赴美留学的主要因素。国际教育协会2018年秋季的一项调查显示，2017-18学年的国际申请者对他们“在美国的人身安全”的担忧同比增幅最大，这一年美国学校的国际学生人数有所下降。

The fear of being caught in a mass shooting has become a major factor in international students’ decisions about whether to study in the U.S. According to a fall 2018 survey by the Institute of International Education, the issue with the biggest year-over-year increase in concern among international applicants in 2017–18—a year in which U.S. institutions saw a decline in international enrollment—was their “physical safety in the U.S.”

人身安全也是许多已经在美国的留学生每天都关心的问题：根据世界教育服务中心2019年的一项调查，四分之一在美留学生对其所在学校的枪支暴力问题感到担忧。

It’s also a daily concern for many international students already studying in America: according to a 2019 survey by the World Education Services, a quarter of international students in the U.S. expressed worry about gun violence at their institution.

国际教育研究和战略独立顾问拉吉卡·班达里表示，近年来，对枪支暴力和人身安全的担忧已经超越其他问题，成为在美国留学最突出的弊端。

Rajika Bhandari, an independent consultant on international education research and strategy, said that in recent years fears about gun violence and personal safety have eclipsed other perceived drawbacks of studying in the U.S.

她说："在广泛的全球调查中，当学生被问及赴美留学的缺点时，人身安全问题上升到了首位。而以前主要的障碍是费用和签证，当然这些仍然存在；只是个人安全问题真的愈发严重。"

“In broad global surveys, when students have been asked about the downsides of going to the U.S., we’ve seen the lack of personal safety rise to the top,” she said. “Before it was primarily about cost and visa hurdles, which of course are still there; it’s just that personal safety has really become quite magnified.”

而枪支暴力问题并没有得到有效控制，仅在过去几个月里，校园枪击事件就占据了各大新闻头条。去年10月，亚利桑那大学的一名教授被教过的学生杀害；11月，弗吉尼亚大学的三名足球运动员在球队的大巴上被枪杀，据报道抢手是他们的一名同学。今年2月，密歇根州立大学的大规模枪击事件加剧了国际家庭的担忧，在这起枪击事件中有两名受害者是国际学生。

The gun violence driving these fears has not abated; in the past few months alone, campus shootings have dominated headlines. In October, a University of Arizona professor was murdered by a former student; the next month, three University of Virginia football players were shot and killed on their team bus, allegedly by a classmate. The February mass shooting at Michigan State exacerbated the concerns of international families since the gunman injured two of their own.

引发安全担忧的不仅仅是校园枪击事件。2021年11月，芝加哥大学中国留学生郑少雄在一次街头抢劫中被枪杀。一周后，数百名学生（其中许多是国际学生）在校园内游行，要求加强枪支立法。他们手举标语：“我们来这里是为了学习，而不是赴死”，“下一个是谁？”

It’s not just campus shootings driving safety fears. In November 2021, Shaoxiong Zheng, a Chinese international student at the University of Chicago—a dream destination for many international students—was shot and killed in a street robbery. A week later, hundreds of students, many of them international, marched across campus to call for stricter gun legislation, holding signs reading, “We’re here to learn, not to die” and “Who’s next?”

世界教育服务中心的调查还发现，与其他地区学生相比，亚洲学生更担心枪支暴力问题。25%的拉丁美洲学生和32%的欧洲学生表示他们担心枪支暴力，而在南亚和东亚学生中这一比例高达40%。

The 2019 WES survey found not only that international students in the U.S. were concerned about gun violence but also that some were more concerned than others. Only 25 percent of students from Latin America and 32 percent from Europe said they were worried about gun violence, compared to upward of 40 percent from South Asia and East Asia.

亚利桑那大学教育政策研究教授珍妮·李将此归因于枪支在中国和其他亚洲国家的稀有性。

Jenny Lee, a professor of educational policy studies at the University of Arizona, chalks this up to the rarity of guns in China and other Asian countries.

“尤其是在亚洲，枪支是很罕见的、很难获得的。因此，亚洲学生对枪支暴力的不安感加更强烈。”

“In Asia in particular, it’s not just hard to obtain a gun; you don’t really ever see them.,” she said. “So that general sense of unease around guns is heightened.”

编辑：董静

实习 生：李蕙帆