2008 Woodie Awards
Guilford Students Take Work Trip to West Bank
Brice Tarleton
Issue date: 9/7/07 Section: Features
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Entering the Founders Hall gallery on Aug. 29, the first things I noticed were the posters.
One displayed a bleeding hand pierced with barbed wire, above the words "Free Palestine." Another proclaimed "Forty years of occupation . . . we still resist," under a picture of a fluttering Palestinian flag. Everywhere I looked, I saw the slogan, "The wall will fall - Collective punishment is a war crime."
A handful of Guilford students were gathered to give a presentation on a work trip to Israel and Palestine they had taken this summer, the tenth year Guilford has done so. The group consisted of seven students, led by Campus Ministry Coordinator Max Carter and his wife Jane, Professor of economics Robert G. Williams, and a resident of the local Friends Homes, Marietta Wright.
"I was gratified to travel with an intergenerational, interfaith, international group," said Carter. "It gives us so many different lenses to look through."
The main purpose of the trip was to do volunteer work at the Ramallah Friends' Schools, a derivative of the international Quaker group Friends United Meeting. Additionally, the group wanted to learn from the Middle Eastern culture and religious views, spending 10 days in both Israel and Palestine.
"We also wanted to reassure the folk in Ramallah that Guilford is still a safe place," said Carter. "The Bryan incident shook a lot of our Palestinian community to the core. They know that post-9/11 America is a scary place to be."
The presentation moved chronologically through the group's itinerary. On June 27, the group began their trip, traveling to Israel to explore famous religious and historical sites, including the Western Wall, the Sea of Galilee, and Tel Aviv.
"It's amazing how many legendary religious and historical sites you can travel to in half a day," said Carter. "The whole area is smaller than the state of Delaware."
One emotional location was the Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's holocaust museum. The architecture of the building begins spacious and gradually becomes more confining as a reflection of the pressures felt throughout the progression of the Holocaust.
One displayed a bleeding hand pierced with barbed wire, above the words "Free Palestine." Another proclaimed "Forty years of occupation . . . we still resist," under a picture of a fluttering Palestinian flag. Everywhere I looked, I saw the slogan, "The wall will fall - Collective punishment is a war crime."
A handful of Guilford students were gathered to give a presentation on a work trip to Israel and Palestine they had taken this summer, the tenth year Guilford has done so. The group consisted of seven students, led by Campus Ministry Coordinator Max Carter and his wife Jane, Professor of economics Robert G. Williams, and a resident of the local Friends Homes, Marietta Wright.
"I was gratified to travel with an intergenerational, interfaith, international group," said Carter. "It gives us so many different lenses to look through."
The main purpose of the trip was to do volunteer work at the Ramallah Friends' Schools, a derivative of the international Quaker group Friends United Meeting. Additionally, the group wanted to learn from the Middle Eastern culture and religious views, spending 10 days in both Israel and Palestine.
"We also wanted to reassure the folk in Ramallah that Guilford is still a safe place," said Carter. "The Bryan incident shook a lot of our Palestinian community to the core. They know that post-9/11 America is a scary place to be."
The presentation moved chronologically through the group's itinerary. On June 27, the group began their trip, traveling to Israel to explore famous religious and historical sites, including the Western Wall, the Sea of Galilee, and Tel Aviv.
"It's amazing how many legendary religious and historical sites you can travel to in half a day," said Carter. "The whole area is smaller than the state of Delaware."
One emotional location was the Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's holocaust museum. The architecture of the building begins spacious and gradually becomes more confining as a reflection of the pressures felt throughout the progression of the Holocaust.
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