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Montgomery
College students could be from Damascus, Maryland—or
Damascus, Syria
BY
ETAN HOROWITZ
Seven
months after the fact, Montgomery College registrar's associate
Naheda Kaibni is still astonished when she tells the story
of the phone call from her cousin in Ramallah.
Her cousin,
an English teacher at Birzeit University, had been talking
to students about colleges in the United States, and one of
the schools that came up in conversation was the community
college 6,000 miles away in suburban Washington.
The Mideast
mention of Montgomery College may be surprising, but it reflects
the worldwide reach the school has gained through word of
mouth and a surging international student population.
"Once
anybody walks on this campus, you can't walk 10 feet and not
see the international flavor of our population," said Sherman
Helberg, the director of admissions, records and registration
for Montgomery College.
In Maryland,
Montgomery College is second in international student enrollment
only to the University of Maryland, College Park, which has
about 12,000 more students. College Park had 3,711 foreign
students in the 2001-2002 school year and Montgomery College
had 3,217, according to a report by the Institute of International
Education.
Helberg
would like to take credit for attracting so many international
students, but said the college simply mirrors the international
population of Montgomery County. Foreign-born persons made
up 28 percent of the county's 870,000 residents in 2000, according
to the Census Bureau.
"Many
of our students are relatives or friends of people working
in embassies," Helberg said. "We're a great school, but being
great is not enoughÑlocation and cost is a huge factor."
Montgomery
College boasts students from 170 countries, with the highest
number from India, El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea and Peru. Helberg
said there are only a handful that come to the school without
any ties to the region.
Unlike
some other community colleges, however, Montgomery College
has not had to recruit overseas to boost international enrollment.
"If we
don't step over the line in Montgomery County [to recruit
from other counties], why would I step over the line as the
ocean goes?" Helberg asked.
"Our purpose
is to serve this community right here. We think we have clearly
defined our mission and we are fulfilling that mission, and
it does include inter-national students. But they're international
students who, in one way or another, are already a part of
our community."
For students
like Robert Jirikdjian, the benefits of Montgomery College
are clear: an affordable, quality education that is simply
not available in his native Lebanon.
"In the
United States, you can work and study at the same time; in
Lebanon, you can't do that," said Jirikdjian, 25, a photography
major.
He joined
his three sisters in the United States in April, and splits
his time between classes at MC and work at a dry-cleaning
store. He said seeing so many other international students
on campus has eased the transition.
Helberg,
who has worked at Montgomery College for 23 years, said the
school's international student population began to surge in
the 1980s and is still rising.
"In all
the parts of the world where you have strife, 10 years later
you are going to see permanent residents [in this country],"
he said.
After
the Sept. 11 attacks, officials at all colleges worried that
international students would have a harder time coming to
the United States.
Stricter
regulations for obtaining a student visa have made it harder
for foreign students to enter the country, but international
students are still flocking to Montgomery College and other
schools, studies show.
"Even
with the Sept.11 stuff, INS [Immigration and Naturalization
Service] crackdowns, and ...hoops you have to go through,
there has been no letup at all," Helberg said of his school's
foreign enrollment.
But while
international students kept coming, some reported verbal and,
in some cases, physical abuse at the community college after
Sept.11.
"I wasn't
treated the same way after 9/11," said Sam, 24, a student
from Yemen, who declined to give his last name. "On campus,
people took action against me. Either they cut their friendship
with me, or were throwing stuff at me."
Sam, who
came to this country six years ago and graduated from nearby
Richard Montgomery High School, said those confrontations
have stopped for the most part.
But bringing
more foreign students to campus could help prevent those sort
of tensions in the future, Helberg said.
"The more
kinds of people we actually interact with, the more we know
that no action by any party represents that entire group that
they stand for," he said. "If there is ever going to be world
peace in our lifetime, it is because of that, not anything
we can teach.
"It brings
an element to education that we cannot provide . . . at all,"
Helberg said. "And before we had it, we didn't know we were
missing it."
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