Iraqi Student Solidarity Committee (ISSC) celebrates success

Andrew Birawri was a senior in high school when American troops bombed his city, beginning the War, which would later become the Occupation, in Iraq. The next year Andrew enrolled at Baghdad’s University of Technology to study mechanical engineering. “At the time I didn’t know I would be leaving, so I decided to carry on with my education until it got worse for me and for my family.” That point came in 2006, when the violence in Baghdad made life too dangerous for Andrew’s family to continue living there.

Andrew grew up in Baghdad in an Assyrian Christian community. Assyrian was Andrew’s first language —he didn’t learn Arabic until he started going to school. Baghdad is an incredibly diverse city, and before the US invasion in 2003, people of different religions coexisted. But the instability caused by the power vacuum after Saddam Hussein was ousted set the stage for gangs to fight for control, wreaking havoc on many people’s lives in the process. As a minority, Christians were targeted. “A lot of churches were bombed,” Andrew said. “The church I used to go to was bombed.”

Leaving behind the city where he had lived his whole life, Andrew went with his family to Syria, where they began seeking amnesty from the US. In Syria, Andrew learned about the Iraqi Student Project (ISP). His aunt went to church with some of the group’s members, and when she found out that the ISP helped Iraqi students go to college in the US, she encouraged Andrew and his twin sister to apply for the program.

After being interviewed and taking an English proficiency test, Andrew and his sister were accepted. They attended English classes and got help with college and scholarship applications. Andrew and his sister had been in the program for seven months when their family learned that they had been accepted to the United States; they would be able to emigrate.

This was good news, but it posed a problem for Andrew. If he went to the US, he would no longer receive help from the ISP. He was faced with choosing between staying with his family or pursuing an education. He decided to move with his family.

They arrived in Chicago in August of 2008. “When I came with my family, I felt hopeless. I didn’t know I would be coming to Evergreen.”
Only a month after moving to Chicago, Andrew received word from the ISP that a group called the Iraqi Student Solidarity Committee (ISSC) was looking for a student to bring to The Evergreen State College, as part of a new program that would grant a tuition waiver to a student displaced by war.

Andrew got in touch with ISSC and started the process of applying to Evergreen. It took several months, since he was having the ISP send his transcripts from Iraq, and there was a lot of paperwork on the Olympia end. In March 2009, Andrew was accepted to Evergreen.
Chicago has the largest Iraqi immigrant population in the world. Some of Andrew’s aunts and uncles were already living there when he arrived with his family, so Andrew had felt very much at home in the midwestern city. Now he was preparing to move again, this time to a place where he didn’t know anyone. Still, he was excited to be returning to school.

Last fall was Andrew’s first quarter at Evergreen. The ISSC placed him with a host family, a couple who live near the college. He bikes to school most of the time and is liking Olympia. “This place is amazing. I mean, the nature here is beautiful...I always tell my mom, ‘You should come visit me sometime; you should see this place,’ because I know she would like it. She likes green stuff. She likes gardening.”
Andrew is in the program “American Stories,” the first literature class he’s ever taken. He finds it very interesting, though it has been hard to adjust to Evergreen’s alternative learning structure. He isn’t used to not having exams and a GPA. He also struggles with some of the reading, because English is his third language. Overall he is liking the program.

Andrew isn’t sure what his focus in school will be, but he hopes to someday work for the Red Cross. This is his goal because he likes helping people, and also because he would like to follow in the footsteps of his father, who stayed in Iraq to continue working for the Red Cross there. While Andrew was in Chicago, he met with the director of the Chicago branch of the Red Cross to talk about working there this summer.

Andrew is also interested in studying languages. He started learning German at one point, but decided it was way too hard—harder than English. He might try learning Italian next. He thinks it’s a beautiful language, and he loves Italian food. He likes the fact that he can explore multiple interests at Evergreen.

As much as he has come to enjoy living in Olympia, Andrew says it would be nice if there were more students from Iraq here. He would really like to see the ISSC succeed in bringing more students from Iraq to study at Evergreen. “I really hope an Iraqi student can join me in the future, like next year.”

Andrea Robbins, the only ISSC coordinator left in Olympia (the others moved away after graduating), says she is trying to get together a group to work on fundraising and outreach. “Everything else is taken care of. We know how to get students, and I can find homestays. The institution itself is equipped to have people apply and do all the fussing around logistics. We just need living expenses for more students, and the dream is to influence other state colleges to extend reparations in this fashion.”

If you are interested in working with Andrea on this project, you can contact her at robbinsa@evergreen.edu