My experience abroad first affected me on a very academic and personal level. I’m in James Madison College and one of the subjects we focus on is American history, and we’re told that while in JMC that our prolonged homework assignments are keeping up with the news. That said, I saw myself comparing a lot of Dutch policies to U.S. policy - for example, the Dutch have a very comprehensive sex education program for students starting as young as kindergarten to high school. These programs include talking about consent, “good touch bad touch,” healthy relationship dynamics, and understanding what sex is and how to have it safely. While in the United States sex education is being banned or there is abstinence-only learning. That affected me because I began to think of all the people that are stuck in abusive/unhappy relationships, can’t recognize red flags or what is normal in good relationships, how many women had teen pregnancies because they didn’t know about contraception - effectively ending their life before it had even begun. Now I’m not saying that having a child young ends your life, but it may not be what you wanted and if you didn’t know how to prevent a pregnancy, you were deliberately kept away from it via policy decisions. But what struck me the most was how even if a ruling Dutch coalition government was in power, they still compromised - for example, in the 1960s there were protests for the legalization of abortion and contraception. The Christian Democrats in power at the time legalized contraception but not abortion - in doing so they also made contraception free and very easily accessible, which is why The Netherlands has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the Western world. Any other student on this program will learn about these kind of things, which I hope they would try to emulate in the United States as I am.

I also really enjoyed the Netherlands because of how independent I was there - all the cities in the Netherlands are very walkable with areas for biking and very robust tram systems around the city as well as outside of the Netherlands. For example, I went to Germany for about a day and the train ride took me three hours, all I had to do was go to the Amsterdam Central station to board the train. The entire country and most of its policies are built around personal freedom and accessibility, which is why I would encourage any student to go on this program.

Name: Vasily Yevseyev
Status: Junior
Majors: Comparative Cultures and Politics and Social Relations and Policy
Hometown: Jackson, Michigan
Program: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sexual Politics in the Netherlands