Cover Story

Sense Of Belonging

Local students give their
impressions of BGU.

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SHARON LUCKERMAN
Sta Writer

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Top to bottom: The first graduates of BGU's innovative global
program for doctors who work in underdeveloped countries.
Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva.
Daniel Storchan, far left, with other BGU students visiting a
patient and his mother at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva.

10/11
2002

26

aniel Storchan, 18, of West Bloomfield
arrived in Israel this past August to spend
his freshman year at Ben-Gurion
University. His first impression of the
university is how beautiful it is.
"The openness of the desert reminds you how closed-
in the north is," he says. "The houses are so close
together and full of trees. But the desert's more vast."
The beauty extends to the campus itself, including the
modern architecture of the buildings, he says. "There's a
beautiful center square with lots of palm trees and marsh
plants, like in Michigan, and a small brook running
through it. Everyone is hanging out there, playing
backgammon, like at an American university."
Storchan chose BGU over other Israeli universities,
his mother says, because American students are inte-
grated with Israelis and other foreign students at BGU,
unlike most universities that keep them separate.
"There's a definite sense of diversity here,"
Storchan says in a phone interview from BGU. For
roommates, he's had a native Israeli, a Russian-Israeli
and an Ethiopian-Israeli, as well as an Israeli Arab
friend. who's from Tiberias.
"I feel tension when I read the news, but I haven't a
sense of tension between students [on campus]."
Alana Graziano, 22, a recent graduate from Western
Michigan University in Kalamazoo, studied at BGU in
2000-2001 as a college junior. She agrees that one of the
strong points of her experience at BGU was the campus
diversity. She speaks well of her Bedouin culture class
taught by a Bedouin professor.
However, she had to take her classes in English
because she didn't speak Hebrew well, and all
English speakers — from freshmen to seniors —
were lumped into one group.
"The classes weren't challenging enough in my
field," she says, though the teachers were good.
Asked if he sensed the violence in Israel on cam-
pus, Storchan Teplies that the students had a security
meeting when they arrived. "I'm pretty comfortable
here," he adds, "but I keep in the back of my mind
that it's not always safe."
His mother and father, members of Ohel Moed of
Shomrey Emunah in West Bloomfield, agonized over
letting him go to Israel.
He eventually told his parents he was not allowing
the terrorists to ruin his experience. "This is where I
belong," he says.
And Storchan already has made good on those
words, taking initiatives that landed a photo of him
in the Jerusalem Post.
He and a group of friends like to visit the children's
wing of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva and pass
out balloons to the Bedouin and Jewish children.
"We receive smiles from the mother or father or
kid," he says. "We offer them a speedy recovery and
it makes them feel like they're not alone."