Lulu Shwe sobbed in Grace Johnson’s arms. The rumors were true: the 2026 Study Abroad Thailand program had been canceled.
“Thank you for letting us share our culture with you,” Shwe said.
WCCO-TV published a news story “Karen refugees attending Bethel University reconnect with culture on transformative trip to Thailand” March 5, 2025. The story discussed how the 2025 January Bethel Abroad program changed the lives of Bethel students Htee Wah Moo, Shem Paw, Nay Seya and Shwe. Minnpost and Bethel’s website also published articles covering the same topic.
The WCCO article was reposted on Bethel University’s LinkedIn and Instagram accounts.
“Meet five Bethel students who traveled to Thailand—returning to a place they once lived and had to flee,” the LinkedIn and Instagram posts read.
The Knyaw students had the opportunity to talk about their culture and raise awareness for Knyaw people at Bethel and in the Twin Cities.
But by March 26, the 2026 return trip was canceled, a collaborative decision made between the Study Abroad Office, Student Life and Academic Affairs.
No LinkedIn or Instagram post announced the cancellation. Only students who had signed up for the upcoming 2026 program were informed.
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Miranda Powers, Vice President of Student Experience, sent an email to the 2025 Thailand team scheduling a “follow-up student care” meeting for the group to reflect on its experience abroad. The email was signed by Powers, who added the following names:
- Erica Lynch, Associated Vice President of Student Life
- Julie Finnern, Associate Provost of CAS
- Virginija Wilcox, Associate Dean of International and Off-Campus Programs
Students who study abroad routinely fill out post-program reflection forms upon returning to campus. The forms allow students to share the positive aspects of their time abroad and communicate any concerns they had on the trip.
“There was a number of circumstances we learned during the post-program review process that did not meet our best practices for international off-campus programs,” Wilcox said.
Lynch, Powers, Wilcox and Alicia Ochs, Associate Dean for Student Care, led the March 28 student care meeting. Lead professors Ripley Smith and Jesse Phenow were not present.
The four Knyaw students WCCO had interviewed sat in the meeting wearing their traditional Karen shirts.
“We went from poster child to just being dumped on the side of the street,” Seya said. “A lot of us who did these interviews (on WCCO) … we feel betrayed.”
Wilcox said the Study Abroad Office will still provide opportunities for students to travel to Thailand through third-party programs.
“But I really hope this is not a permanent, you know, cancellation,” Wilcox said. “I really hope it is just a pause, and I really hope we’re able to offer a program that meets the standards going forward.”
This isn’t the first time a Study Abroad program has been canceled. According to Wilcox, Bethel periodically adjusts its study abroad programs based on faculty availability, student interest, global events and logistics. The 2026 Textura program was also canceled due to ongoing security issues in Guatemala, a decision made by Wilcox and program leaders Scott Winter and Jessica Henderson.
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Bethel first sent a trip to Thailand in 2024 to partner with Thoo Mweh Khee (TMK), a learning center for migrants in the western mountains of Thailand. Communications professor Smith created and led the 2024 and 2025 programs alongside adjunct professor Phenow. Smith specializes in the socio-cultural adjustment of immigrants and refugees. Phenow is the co-executive director of The Urban Village, a nonprofit organization in St. Paul that supports Knyaw youth.
Bethel has multiple connections with The Urban Village, which sponsors a scholarship for Knyaw Bethel students and provides nonprofit work and volunteer opportunities for students.
However, one of the organization’s main connections with Bethel was the Thailand interim program, which covered students’ G- and Z- tag courses and focused on cultural immersion and cross-cultural communication. As part of the class, students toured an elephant sanctuary, visited the Mae La refugee camp and did homestays with Knyaw students at TMK. But the trip also offered a way for Knyaw students at Bethel to return home, which sparked the local publicity about the trip.
Senior missional ministries major Johnson traveled to Thailand as a part of the 2025 team.
“This is not like any other study abroad trip,” Johnson said. “This is a return, in our case, of five students to the land in which they were removed forcibly by genocide.”
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Six students from the 2025 trip said that during the meeting, they were informed of three main reasons — or “buckets” — that raised concern in Student Life. Two of the three reasons included “dangerous narratives of faith” and “alcohol usage.” The last reason involved a circumstance that did not meet study abroad best practices, according to Powers.
When confirming information, Powers explained that the purpose of the meeting was to create space for students to reflect and process their experiences. She claimed that the administration did not list the reasons for which the trip was canceled.
“Any framing that implies the meeting revealed ‘the three reasons’ for the decision would be speculative and misrepresentative of both the conversation, the decision-making process and the decision-makers,” Powers said.
Six students said these three points were brought up in the 50-minute meeting.
“[Powers] spent the first 10 minutes outlining what the meeting is going to be, how we are going to talk about the issue, and then shared three main problems,” Johnson said. “She described them as three buckets.”
Before the meeting, sophomore Kaitlyn Baker had written up points that the students wanted to bring up. She emphasized they were all adults who could make their own decisions on the trip.
“Anyone who shared an experience that was positive, the response from the panel was almost verbatim like, ‘I’m glad you had that experience, but if anybody else didn’t, please speak up,’” Baker said. “It was like they were really seeking and trying to get negative feedback.”
Johnson said she did not see any of the administrators taking notes at the meeting.
“It was hard because we had a lot we wanted to say and there was a lot of passion behind what we were saying, and they just weren’t listening,” Johnson said. “But they especially weren’t listening to the Knyaw students.”
At the meeting, Seya and Shwe say they tried to explain that the “buckets” brought up in the meeting didn’t accurately reflect their overall experience on the trip. Moo and Paw said they sat in the meeting without speaking, feeling overwhelmed.
“I just wished they asked us for our opinion,” Moo said. “What about us? What about our voices? What about our perspective?”
Seya asked that the students show support at the meeting by wearing their traditional Karen shirts. He wanted the group to not only represent themselves but also the Knyaw student partners still in Thailand who could have benefited from the 2026 trip.
“When we speak, I am speaking for them [TMK students]. I want them to see us as like they are not only rejecting us, they are also rejecting and letting down people in Thailand,” Seya said.
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For the five Knyaw students, returning to their homeland and being immersed in Knyaw culture with their fellow students changed their lives.
One night during Seya’s homestay in the TMK student housing, the electricity went out while they were halfway through cooking. Seya didn’t know what to do—if he had been alone, he would have eaten at a restaurant or gone to bed hungry. But the TMK students couldn’t afford to go out to eat. Instead, they showed him how to strip the copper wire off the wall and restore the electricity.
“I would have never thought to do that. They just fixed it themselves, and we got a hot meal,” Seya said. “It just shows how capable they are. It’s very inspiring.”
Although he immigrated from Thailand to the U.S. in 2011, Seya felt anxious before the 2025 trip. Will I be able to relate to people? Am I too Americanized? Too whitewashed?
But spending time with the students at TMK and in the homestays quickly eased those worries.
“Even though we grew up in different countries, different environments, we were still able to bond through experiences, through Christ,” Seya said.
Now, Seya and the students who live 8,000 miles away connect through social media, reaching out and staying updated on each other’s lives.
“We became siblings,” Seya said. “I even call them older brothers and sisters.”
For Seya, the trip not only gave him new brothers and sisters but also a deeper understanding of his identity. Before returning to Thailand, Seya never knew what to say when people asked him about his race. Do I really want to say Karen and go through all the extra stuff? Or should I just say I’m Thai even though I’m not Thai?
But after spending time with the Knyaw people in Thailand, Seya says their pride and security grew on him. Now, when asked about his race, Seya tells people he’s Karen.
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Shwe always described herself as quiet and shy. She came to the United States with her family when she was 4, and her only memories of Thailand were built from the stories her parents told her and pictures hung around her home. For Shwe, the trip was a chance to go back in time and learn about the home she never knew. But even more, it was a chance for her to become confident in her identity.
“It changed me as a person, how I approach things,” Shwe said. “I’m more willing to do things now.”
During the homestays, Shwe was paired with Eh Nay, a girl her age. The two of them spent time getting to know each other, sharing stories and culture. Shwe appreciated the way Eh Nay would sit with her as she finished her meals, in no rush to do anything else—just wanting to be in each other’s presence.
“She opened up to me and I was like, ‘Oh wow, I can relate to that.’ We would just talk about our life and friendships and our struggles,” Shwe said.
About 4,000 displaced students attend the TMK learning center. However, because most of TMK’s students are not citizens, the Thai government does not officially acknowledge their educations. Without the official “school” label, universities will not recognize students’ TMK transcripts.
“It’s a great school. They teach and operate like any other school would,” Phenow said. “But just because they have undocumented students, they’re not allowed to give them a degree.”
Phenow said he had hoped that someday Bethel would act as an accreditor for TMK. This institutional recognition would allow TMK students to have an official degree and apply for master’s programs abroad.
According to Phenow, the TMK provost visited Bethel in 2024 and met with President Ross Allen to start the conversation about a partnership, but no formal agreements had been made yet.
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In January 2024, Gabe Kuecker stood at the front of a classroom full of students in Mae La refugee camp. He was trying his best to answer the questions the Bible college students had for him: Who did he vote for? How did he spend his money? What did he study in school? Then one student in the audience stood up.
“You talk of these opportunities,” she said.
She began to cry.
“We do not have any of them. We are stuck here. We cannot leave. We have no opportunities. This is all we have.”
Kuecker will never forget the look on her tear-stained face.
“It really made the refugee experience something real to me,” Kuecker said. “It made me realize that there’s still so much more of my privilege that I didn’t understand, and led me down a path to attempting to explore that more.”
After his experience on the 2024 Thailand trip, Kuecker took a position as a case manager for Arrive Ministries, a refugee resettlement agency in Minnesota. He worked with over 500 individual refugees in the past year and directly case-managed 50 individuals. He has prayed with these refugees, cried with them and learned from them.
“Those interactions that I get to experience every day are just little glimpses of what the kingdom of God looks like,” Kuecker said. “That opportunity would just be so different if I hadn’t gotten to go to Thailand.”
After returning from the 2025 Thailand program, Baker began an internship at The Urban Village working with Knyaw youth. She keeps in touch with her friends in Thailand, checking in after events such as the Burma earthquake.
“I think that for a lot of people, this is exactly the kind of trip they need to open up their eyes to Christianity in a global context,” Baker said. “That white, American Christianity is not all there is.”
And Paw and Moo want to return to Thailand and teach displaced students, such as the ones at TMK.
On the last day at TMK, the students spent the day having a picnic by the river. Paw and her housemate embraced each other knowing this would be their last time together.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to go back, I just want to stay here,’” Paw said. “He was encouraging me, ‘You should go back, finish your education, and then you can come back whenever you want. But get that education for our [Karen] people.’”
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After the WCCO and Minnpost news stories were published, some Knyaw high school students in the Twin Cities reached out to Seya and said they were considering attending Bethel because of the Thailand trip. He hasn’t told them yet that the 2026 program is canceled.
“We plastered Bethel’s good name across all our families, and now we’re going to have to take it all down [and] break their hearts,” Seya said.
Seya, Paw and Moo all used the same word to describe how they felt: betrayed.
“I just felt like I belonged here, like Bethel was the place for me,” Seya said. “Now I’m having second thoughts.”
Smith declined to comment on the cancellation of the trip.
The Clarion also contacted Ochs and Lynch for their perspective on the student care meeting. They did not provide any additional information.
