When students at Smith College study abroad, Smith charges them full Smith tuition, plus room & board, regardless of the international program they study with, for as many semesters as they remain abroad. Smith then provides study abroad students with airfare and food stipends, which range from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars. 

In mid-March, Smith forced all of its Spring 2020 abroad students to return to their home countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of us chose to continue with our abroad classes online, and we plan to finish the semester and receive full credit. 

Over the last few days, Smith has begun charging us for the "unused" portion of our food stipends (i.e., the money from the stipend that theoretically should be left over now that we've all returned home). This is absolutely unacceptable for a number of reasons:

It is deeply unjust and possibly even legally unsound. We never agreed, verbally or in writing, to pay back these stipends under the current circumstances. Section 3.c. of the Study Abroad Agreement states that a student will only be responsible for repaying stipends received if that student voluntarily withdraws from the program and no longer attends classes either at the program or at Smith. Most of us have not voluntarily withdrawn- Smith has forced us back to America, but we are still taking classes with our programs remotely. Therefore, this situation does not give Smith the legal right to ask for this money back. Furthermore, when stipends were paid out, we received absolutely no notification that we might be responsible for repaying them in extenuating circumstances beyond those described in the Study Abroad Agreement. I will also add that the email I personally received after getting my food stipend read "Food stipends are intended to cover food expenses only during the time when classes are in session..." Again, for most abroad students, classes are STILL IN SESSION. The majority of us have chosen to continue working remotely to finish the semester and receive credit. Therefore, the Study Abroad Office has absolutely no right to ask for this money back.

Additionally, most of us are simply incapable of paying back this money. Some of us have no money left (and I would like to remind Smith that this is because none of us were warned that we might someday have to pay this money back!). Many of us still need to buy groceries at home, just as we did abroad. For those of us who returned to our families, our families were not expecting us to return as soon as we did. They were not financially ready or capable to support us again on such short notice. We need this food stipend money in order to relieve the financial burden on our guardians, some of whom have even lost their jobs during the coronavirus crisis. So, not only is asking for this money back legally impossible, it is practically impossible too. 

With that in mind, we make a few demands:

1) The Study Abroad Office will immediately retract its demands for food stipend repayment.

2) The Study Abroad Office and/or Smith College will immediately refund those students whom it has already taken the "unused" food stipend percentage from. ALL charges for the "unused" food stipend which have been applied to student accounts will be immediately canceled. 

Is this really what Smith College stands for in the middle of a pandemic? These actions are shady and legally unsound, and come at the expense of students who are already struggling emotionally and financially in the face of the coronavirus crisis. Smith has disgraced itself with this, and we can only hope that the Study Abroad Office and the Smith College Board of Trustees will come to their senses and stop this nonsense.