The Erasmus Student Network’s branch in Lund wants to bring more exchange students into the working life of the nations in order to expose them to the Lund student culture.
“The Erasmus Experience,” as Oscar Boije calls it, is all about getting international and exchange students to see and feel the culture of their surrounding area. Former president of Lund’s ESN chapter, Robin Svensson, considers the project as “an opportunity for international students to meet and bond with the local students.” ESN does this by bringing them together through trips, parties, and activities.
The organization is currently working on a initiative to get more exchange students working at the student nations. Using an online form, people can submit their interest, and ESN Lund will pass the information on to the nations.
Unintentionally Isolated
Oscar Boije, is one of the key leaders of the student project locally, and realized that the goal of bringing everyone together had become quite a challenge for their Swedish chapter. “The Erasmus idea is to get internationals to experience the culture and the people – but they can’t because they find themselves isolated a bit,” explains Boije.
As Boije sees it, international students tend to group themselves off from local Swedish students, even creating a little bubble of their own where the “international student culture” thrives instead. “Local students are not always eager to get to know these students because they are only around temporarily, for a few months at a time. International students instead tend to isolate themselves into their own groups.”
Connecting via the nations
Therefore, ESN Lund has begun to focus on bringing their internationals into the student life through the nations. The initiative, is meant to bring international students to the nations, not only to party, but also to work.
“When you work, you have to have a connection with the people you are working with. It can be a little bit hard at first, because a lot of the students working are Swedish,” says Boije, but that is exactly what they are aiming for.
However, according to Oscar Boije, the project is still only in it’s beginning stages. “At the moment, the project involving the nations has not yet quite started. We are still working on getting our students connected.”
