Waves III sculpture outside of Chambers North hall. Photo courtesy of Novak Chen

From the Waves III sculpture featuring a multitude of world languages near Chambers to the OLAS/PASA House on Patterson Court, international representation on Davidson College campus is apparent to the naked eye. Boasting over 15 culture and ethnic clubs on campus as well as providing study abroad opportunities through the Dean Rusk International Studies Program, Davidson clearly advertises and utilizes its international connections and student body to the benefit of itself and its students.

With all of these facts in mind, international applicants to Davidson might then readily conclude that the College would support them in any way possible. When push comes to shove, however, Davidson’s current administrative actions suggest the opposite.

One in ten Davidson students are international students, having arrived on an F-1 visa specifically designed to grant academic students temporary status in the United States. That visa carries with it strict restrictions, including not being able to work for any form of compensation outside of two specific authorizations: the Optional Practical Training authorization (OPT), and the Curricular Practical Training authorization (CPT). OPT authorizes F-1 visa holders to work in the United States for an additional 12 months after graduation, while CPT authorizes F-1 students to engage in work-adjacent experiences “that [are] an integral part of an established curriculum.”

At Davidson, CPT authorizations allowed international students to gain work experience through internships, fellowships, and summer jobs, experience that kept Davidson graduates competitive with students from other top universities. Davidson's website advertises that same competitiveness, boasting a 72% participation rate in research or internships. Now those opportunities have been curtailed for international students, and all previously authorized cases have been retroactively rescinded.

On August 12, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) released a broadcast message reminding school officials that they are personally liable when they approve I-20 documents for international students. Within 24 hours, Davidson College and the University of California, Berkeley were the first to pause all CPT authorizations. Two weeks and a second broadcast later, more than 100 universities and liberal arts colleges have followed by pausing or tightening CPT authorizations.

Beyond merely pausing CPT, however, Davidson went on to cancel existing CPT authorizations for the fall 2026 semester, a step few other institutions have taken. Given the second broadcast message, which clarified the regulatory definition of "integral to education" under CPT regulations, the timeline for formally updating College policy on experiential learning credits for experiences that require CPT is unclear.

Under previous administrations, the requirement that CPT be an "integral part of an established curriculum" was broadly interpreted to be satisfied when a work experience granted academic credit through an established part of the curriculum. Davidson's version of that was XPL199, a class described in its course description as "[enabling] students to engage in personal, professional, cultural and academically relevant experiences for academic credit."

These broadcasts may have achieved their intended purpose: pushing schools into a legal retreat from their previous positions on CPT authorizations. Read in the context of the Department of Homeland Security's earlier attempt to revoke Harvard's SEVP certification (the authorization that allows institutions to enroll international students), the move seems designed to give the Justice Department a new vector of attack against institutions of higher education. Given Project 2025's education reform goals, further restricting F-1 visas would also help stem the flow of H-1B workers, many of whom change status from F-1 visas.

So where, then, is the institutional outcry against this new restrictive interpretation? It appears that institutions of higher education, including Davidson, are more concerned with their legal well-being than with the academic and career prospects of their international students, choosing to stay out of this fight and keep their heads down rather than stand up for their international communities.

Sure, when Davidson College was under threat of seeing its endowment tax increase from 1.4% to 7%, we saw lobbyists jump into overtime to carve out an enrollment-size exception of 5,000 students, under which Davidson and other colleges wouldn't have to pay any additional tax. We even saw the College play its trump card: a message of support from President Doug Hicks.

And yet, for the student body on campus? Not a word, outside of privately circulated memos detailing how every international student's plans to gain work experience would be cut. In a time when words are cheap, not even a peep out of the administration says volumes about where its priorities lie. Where numerous other schools have released publicly available updates on their respective office websites, Davidson has stayed radio silent, risking uninformed decision-making by both current students and prospective applicants.

As it appears, one of President Hick’s favorite ways to praise the College is to compare it to its peers and conclude that we as an institution stand head and shoulders above the rest.

And yet where Skidmore College, Grinnell College, and Hamilton College — all comparable colleges in their own right — have each released public notices on their webpages, Davidson has not.

While there is neither question about the generosity of our alums, nor the strength of our academics, there are many as to the quality of Davidson’s so-called ‘leadership’ in the public space. Leadership is not silent, nor is it subtle. Where the international community has no recourse and no options, Davidson’s flavor of leadership must be loud, and it must be obvious.

Beyond Davidson’s apparent hypocrisy demonstrated through its lack of any public communication in the face of its Commitment to Freedom of Expression, perhaps the worst of its crimes are its hesitancy to inform international applicants in the Class of 2031 about these policy updates to internal CPT policy. While the Admissions Office has responded to individual queries regarding CPT policy, there has been no public announcement. This is not merely an operational inefficiency inherent to all administrations, but rather a deliberate wait-and-see strategy that protects Davidson's legal position at the expense of information international students deserve to know. As of this article's publication, no publicly available page on Davidson's website has been updated.

The omission is an administrative oversight at best and a calculated moral failing at worst. Davidson must make immediate amends so that the incoming class is not caught up in the political crossfire of the current federal administration’s war on higher education. Whether it comes in the form of updates to its website, a public memo to all applicants, or an open letter to the Davidson community, nothing less than full transparency on the College’s stance will suffice.

It is understandable that policy interpretations like this CPT update are much more vulnerable to litigation than the endowment tax change, so much so that the College’s preferred action is inaction. But as the optics stand, one could conclude that Davidson protects students’ interests only so far as the College’s financial interests are concerned.

In an era when Davidson has been so quick to pride itself on being a leader among its peers, it has backed that up by being among the first liberal arts colleges in the United States to communicate CPT policy changes to enrolled students. But simply altering policy to protect against legal attacks isn’t enough. Where clarity and truth have been so cheapened, Davidson College cannot afford to stay silent. Until Davidson speaks, its actions echo only its self-interest, with no mention of the noble ideals it claims to stand for.

And that is a damning indictment of Davidson’s values indeed.

For Davidson, the Sound of Leadership is…