The Negev blooms – for students

TSAHAR ROTEM SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

More than 16,000 students recently returned to the campus of Ben-Gurion University this fall and awakened the capital of the Negev from its intersession slumber. In the morning, steady car traffic filled Reger Boulevard, Be'er Sheva's main traffic artery which passes next to the university, Soroka Hospital and the mall. Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin travelled on the same road as they headed to what later became the university's Gate of Peace.

The story of Ben-Gurion University's success is ostensibly a simple one: a little vision, wise investment and efficient management. All of the above, together with an ambitious and well-connected university president like Prof. Avishay Braverman can explain how it has become a prestigious institution that draws students from all over the country.

Braverman was appointed president of Ben-Gurion University in 1990 after working in Washington as a senior economist for the World Bank and he is the one associated with the university's development. The main reason for this is his image as a particularly successful fund-raiser. The connections he has from his previous position help him raise funds, as well as internationally market the university as an academic institution. To visitors, he talks at length about his "vision of the Negev" where a train ride from Be'er Sheva to Tel-Aviv will take only 40 minutes and, thanks to the university, the capital of the Negev will also be the capital of high-tech.

So far, Be'er Sheva has yet to become the Israeli Silicon Valley, however, according to BGU figures, in the last nine years, the number of students there has almost doubled. This year, there was a particularly sharp increase in the number of undergraduate students from 8,500 to 9,900, which indicates a growing number of students whose first choice is Ben-Gurion.

BGU was founded 33 years ago as the University of the Negev in the spirit of David Ben-Gurion's vision of making the desert bloom. Its goal was to spearhead the agricultural, industrial, educational and cultural development of the Negev, as one Internet site about the Negev says. In the early 1960s, a group of entrepreneurs from Be'er Sheva approached the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot with a proposal that they offer lectures in the Negev city. In 1964, the Institute of Higher Education in the Negev, which was the basis of the university, opened. The first department was biology and, a year later, engineering, humanities and social sciences departments were added.

After the end of the 1967 Six Day War, then-prime minister Levi Eshkol appointed a "committee to establish the university of the Negev" and, in November 1969, after a festive opening, the first academic year of study began with just 50 students. Following the death of Ben-Gurion, the university was renamed Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

A unique atmosphere

Despite the initially difficult conditions – the distance from the centre of the country, the campus's location in a stigmatized city and the competition with the more established universities – BGU became one of the most prominent universities in Israel. Prof. Nachum Finger, an industrial engineer who was the university rector from 1994 until the past academic year, believes the university's success should be attributed primarily to "the boldness we had to try innovative programs." Among other things, he cited the Institute for Desert Research in Sde Boker, which is one of the world's leaders in its field. They were the first to open a course for studying emergency medicine and gerontology. Another one of the university's innovations was to combine the departments of psychology, education and social work under one roof in a department of behavioral sciences.

In addition, the university granted generous scholarships to outstanding students in order to increase the number of advanced degree students. Finger said that around 80 per cent of the additional students in the last eight years came because of the new programs and "there is data showing that we managed to attract the upper percentiles of high school graduates in Israel."

Beyond the academic development, it is also apparent that BGU has been transformed into a unique social centre for young people in Israel, where approximately half of the students are "outsiders" from the centre and north of the country.

Amit Pe'er, 27, is a fourth-year student in communication systems engineering, a program that is unique to BGU. He said he did not want to study at Tel-Aviv University or at the Technion, "because of the stories I heard about the atmosphere on the campuses there, which were alienating and less social." When he came to Ben-Gurion, he discovered that "the city's disadvantage is actually the university's biggest advantage. It forces everyone to be together even after classes end and to create something here that doesn't exist anywhere else."

Finger suggested other reasons for the social thriving: "The distances inside our campus are very small, not like in Jerusalem, for example. Here the student body is 50 per cent men and 50 per cent women. A male student of electrical engineering is studying alongside the female student of literature. The boys on the Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem have a problem. They're far away. All the activities here take place in the same area."

Hardly anyone disputes BGU's success as an academic institution, especially because of the achievements it has recorded in recent years. On the other hand, opinion is divided over its contribution to regional development, which is one of the stated goals of its establishment. Braverman, some on campus say, gets annoyed when he hears the words "Be'er Sheva University." Since arriving here, he makes sure to market the university he heads as a separate entity from the city.

Study and then leave

It is not just a matter of semantics. Braverman apparently is not interested in having the university's name associated with its host city, which so far has not had any of the success roll over onto it. Unlike other cities – such as Ashkelon, for example, which figured out how to take advantage of an academic institution located there – in the capital of the Negev, it seems that the university has not spurred development of the city. Yehuda Alloush, who heads the protest movement Kol Za'akat Ha'am (The People's Outcry), blames the university and its leaders.

"It's a university where most of the people come from the centre of the country, despite the data they publicize," said Alloush. "I've been leading the social campaign on behalf of residents of the south for a long time. So far, I haven't seen – not even once – a lecturer who came to support us, nor have I seen the student union organizing some kind of social welfare project. Everyone comes here, studies and leaves and nothing more."

People associated with Ben-Gurion University counter that the mere decision to build the campus and student dormitories specifically in the middle of the Gimmel and Dalet quarters, which were, and are, synonymous with distressed neighborhoods, established the basis for genuine student involvement in the life of the community. In this framework, the Community Action Unit, headed by Ya'akov Ayash, was also established at BGU and it grants scholarships to students as part of a program to train leaders from periphery areas and runs higher education programs for adults.

Ayash, a native of Netivot and a graduate of the university, is responsible for, among other things, some 60 "open apartments" in various Be'er Sheva neighborhoods, which are assigned to students rent-free and in exchange they must make them into centres of social activity for the neighborhood residents. Approximately 120 students live in these apartments and they commit to donate eight hours a week to the community, during which they offer after-school classes in computers, science, judo and art in their apartments. Many of them "adopt" families. This is a unique model that is used only in Be'er Sheva.

Recently, as part of the activities of the Community Action Unit, BGU students arranged a festive event to register children from the East Dalet neighborhood for the after-school classes.

"The kids were very excited," said Meir Ben David, an activist in the neighborhood adjacent to the university, which has approximately 10,000 residents. However, this event would not have happened, were it not for the campaign waged by him and other activists against the university. According to him, until recently, the university "took away from the neighborhood space, plots and parking lots, but did not give back anything in return. Since the campaign started, you feel them here. They basically gave us compensation."

The failure to establish a good relationship with the residents of the adjacent Dalet neighborhood is not necessarily a sign of introversion. Ben-Gurion University is a particular favorite of the economic entities in the southern part of the country – some good examples are the companies in the Omer Industrial Park, with whom it frequently collaborates. The university also has developed good relations with nearby Soroka Hospital and with the more distant Negev development town of Yeroham, which enjoys a fruitful collaboration with the university, mainly in the field of education.

This article was originally published in Ha'aretz newspaper in Israel and is reprinted with permission.

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