Montrealer receives prestigious Rhodes Scholarship

Three students from Quebec are hitting the road to Oxford University as Rhodes Scholars, one of them is Rayene Bouzitoun. Born in Algeria, she grew up in Montreal, in St-Michel.

Getting this scholarship is something she says she never thought would happen.

Rayene Bouzitoun one of three students from Quebec headed to Oxford University as Rhodes Scholars
(Photo credit: Rayene Bouzitoun )

“I don’t think the information has completely sunk in just yet,” Bouzitoun says.

Bouzitoun says the experience has been overwhelming but extremely positive.

“I received the call and I remember them telling me, so we have just one more last question…if we were to offer you a Rhodes scholarship, would you accept it?” Bouzitoun shaking her head while remembering the moment, she says she doesn’t remember if she answered the question “I think I went straight to crying for the rest of the evening.”

#WATCH: “I was very nervous,” says Montrealer Rayene Bouzitoun, one of three Quebecers selected to receive the prestigious Rhodes scholarship this year.

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The Rhodes Scholarship is the oldest international scholarship programme, which enables outstanding postgraduate students from around the world to have a fully funded opportunity to study in England at Oxford university.

The scholarship, Bouzitoun says, means “extremely accomplished people who believed in my vision to change things for the better and who are giving me an opportunity to go and get education, to use the privileges I can get along the way to better serve my community.”

A total of eleven Scholarships are available each year in Canada, Bouzitoun says while she is one of those eleven, she hopes there will be many more Rhodes Scholars in the coming years.

“I want to work to make sure that I’m not the only one in my community, because I know we have a lot of amazing and outstanding youth who would deserve [the scholarship] and who would do amazing things with it,” she says.

Currently studying at the University of Montreal she hopes to continue her pursuit of law at Oxford so that she can help on an international level in countries transitioning into democracies.

“I want to push my understanding of transitional justice processes a bit more and of international law in general to see how do we better help and support countries”

Rayene Bouzitoun one of three students from Quebec headed to Oxford University as Rhodes Scholars
(Photo credit: Rayene Bouzitoun )

The passion comes from her home country of Algeria, which went through a civil war in the 90s but never went through a transitional justice process.

“We never addressed the human rights violation that the country has known in ten years of the Civil War,” she says.

Coming from a first generation immigrant family, Bouzitoun says her parents were extremely hard working. She describes her community in St. Michel as great role models adding they are part of the reason why she is able to be a Rhodes Scholar, “ I have my Algerian community, I have my St. Michel community, I have people at my school. So my CEGEP, my universities and everyone has always been so generous in their support to me,” she says.

For now she wants to make one thing clear, she is no different from anyone else that may want to become a Rhodes Scholar one day.

“I want to make sure that people who do read about someone getting this scholarship or about someone accessing such an opportunity that they don’t distance themselves from something like that, but they realize that there’s absolutely nothing separating me from anyone else around me.”