Holy Cross has made a stunning decision regarding the department of study abroad. They have decided to throw precedent to the wind, and introduce a new program in Pamplona Spain. At the University of Navarra, a Jesuit college in the Spanish speaking region of Spain, students who have been studying French will be assured that they will get all the preparation they need to practice their language to travel to France at some other point in their lives.

“Although the University of Navarra is not a French speaking University, nor does it reside in France, nor does it make much sense at all to send of students to a school where the official language of the university is not the language that they signed up for… I believe that this was the right decision,” said the program director.

Several French students were surprised when they arrived at the University because they believed that French would be the primary language of Pamplona, Spain. “I don’t know, yeah, I guess I just kind of assumed that they’d be speaking French, but it turns out that it’s pretty much exclusively Spanish. Oh well,” offered one student.

Another student was a little bit more positive when she said, “So what? Who really cares that we had to search for nonexistent French classes in a school where the vast majority were in Spanish.”

Despite the various issues that this program has encountered, Holy Cross plans to expand such opportunities. In the future, study abroad students can study German in Chile, Arabic in China, and of course Dutch in Russia. Such programs will certainly benefit students for years to come!