UMC: Send mail in diff. languages

The group hopes U. forms will soon be sent home in students' native languages. When the University's new alcohol policy was mailed home to students' houses in the fall, College junior Hoa Duong's parents could not understand it. When a financial aid application arrived in the mailbox, Duong had to fill it out herself because her parents could not decipher the words on the form. Difficulties like these do not even occur to most students. But some households, in which English is a second language or not used at all, face these problems all the time. "It really sets you back a lot," Duong said, "because your parents just don't understand." Currently, all of the official letters, brochures and forms sent home to parents by the University are only available in English. But United Minorities Council Chairman Jerome Byam, a College junior, is hoping to change that. Byam said the UMC hopes to initiate a program to send home University documents in languages other than English. "We need to try to identify the key languages and the key forms and brochures that go home," Byam said. He said that while about 139 languages are spoken by Penn students and their families, the group is "hoping to narrow it down to four or five commonly spoken languages," he said. Byam predicted that Spanish and at least two Asian languages would be among the key languages. The UMC met with the officials in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions yesterday to discuss this and other issues. But admissions officers would not be directly involved in sending all documents in multiple languages, UMC Admissions Co-Chair and College junior Kwasi Asare said, because they send information to prospective students -- not just enrolled students. Asare said the UMC plans to find out the percentage of non-English speaking students at Penn from the admissions office, and will then conduct a survey this semester to determine if there is a need for forms in multiple languages. Additionally, Byam said, the UMC will discuss the issue with University President Judith Rodin and Provost Robert Barchi over the upcoming weeks. Asare noted that the group was still in preliminary planning stages for this project and could not estimate the funding expenses. "At this point, we need to establish if there's a need before we think about funding," he said. But Byam added that, "once we establish a need, its a worthwhile thing to fund." Byam said that the UMC hopes to do a pilot program of the project by the end of the semester, selecting a group of about 50 students and sending home the brochures to see if it makes a difference. Asare also said that, if implemented, the effort "will definitely set us apart from the other Ivy League schools, to take that extra step to make Penn as attractive as possible to everyone." He added that he hoped the survey would justify the effort to the administration. Duong is the former chairwoman of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition and the daughter of parents who speak only Chinese. "Personally, I've had problems with this myself and I know people who have," she said of the language barrier. "But I think it's a tremendous amount of effort the University would have to put into this [endeavor]." Duong added that she would definitely support an effort to translate documents, if it were found feasible. "I would applaud that initiative," she said. "It would take a tremendous burden off of a lot of students' shoulders."