A year after the suspension of Tufts-in-Ghana last fall, the University has hired a consultant to evaluate the security of the abroad program and the plausibility of its reinstatement.
Tufts students in Ghana were called home in the spring of 2000 after a student was violently raped on the University of Ghana's Accra campus - the fourth instance of sexual assault against a Tufts student since 1998.
Based on recommendations from the joint faculty-administrative committee that oversees Tufts' abroad programs, former Vice President of Arts, Sciences & Engineering Mel Bernstein decided to suspend the program pending a comprehensive review of Tufts' ability to guarantee participants' safety.
That committee recently hired Janna Behrens to work to restructure the program to ensure student safety. Behrens worked in Ghana with the Peace Corps from 1995 to 1996 before moving to Boston to work as a recruiter for the organization. She said Ghana has changed considerably in the four years since she lived there, but she plans to visit in October for a first-hand assessment of campus security in Accra.
After compiling recommendations from administrators, faculty, alumni, and Ghanaian officials, Behrens will meet with the program's resident director, Kweku Bilson, to evaluate local efforts to increase the safety of foreign students. The committee, which includes Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, will then decide the feasibility of implementing Behrens' proposals.
Tufts' program is one of many hosted by Ghana's largest university. Foreign students previously lived in dorms with their Ghanaian counterparts, but a 2000 strike by local students left the campus largely empty, and the university has since built a dormitory specifically for foreign students.
The international dorm has increased security, but critics of the plan say segregating foreign students deprives them of the opportunity to interact with Ghanaians, one of the program's objectives.
"I personally thought that foreigners should stay with us," said George Akanlig-Pare, a University of Ghana exchange student studying at Tufts. "They would learn a lot of things they wouldn't learn in the classroom."
Program alumni added that the plan will not increase the safety of students because befriending Ghanaian students in the dorms, not security guards, provides the best protection.
Many juniors are considering study abroad in Ghana, but the recent rapes gave them and their families pause.
"I had thought about going last year," junior Erika Robbins said. "I had talked [my parents] into it before they closed the program. When they heard it was closed, they said, 'no way.'"
Tufts began its Ghana program in 1996 with support from music professor David Locke. Fifty students have participated since its inception.
The University of Ghana, which houses 15,000 students, is located in Legon, just outside Accra, the nation's capital. Ghana, which has a market economy and a democratic government, is regarded as one of West Africa's most stable nations.
