Book drive benefits Baghdad students
Erik Tobiason '08, center, is surrounded by members of SADACA, who are, from left to right, Meg Murphy '07, Deborah Katvala '09, Devin Opotzner '09, Alex Cornwall '06, and Amanda Michaud '07. The group has collected more than 360 books in the past few months to send to Iraq as part of the national Books for Baghdad movement.
otivation was not an issue for Erik Tobiason '08. He wanted to find some way to help the people of Iraq rebuild their lives, and he also hoped to get his fellow students excited about joining the effort. But Tobiason says it was important to identify a nonpolitical, nondivisive way to achieve that goal. "I needed to find a program that would work for everyone, regardless of your feelings about the war, and was as simple as one college student reaching out a hand to help another student," he says.
Tobiason, who transferred to Rochester last fall and is studying physics and religion, began talking to classmates and friends about ways to reach out. He was familiar with the Books for Baghdad program, an initiative started in 2004 by Safaa Al-Hamdani, an Iraq native and biology professor at Jackson State University in Alabama, to restock the shelves of the library at the University of Baghdad. Al-Hamdani established a distribution center on the Alabama campus that accepts books collected by college students across the country. The organization forwards those textbooks to students and teachers in Baghdad and at other colleges throughout Iraq.
Tobiason says the idea coalesced one day as he was leaving his dorm. He saw a meeting announcement for a new group forming at Rochester to promote awareness of Arab culture though outreach and education. Called the Student Association for the Development of Arab Cultural Awareness, or SADACA (Arabic for friend), the group takes a secular, apolitical approach to issues and aims to address common stereotypes and misconceptions about Arab culture and customs.
Tobiason brought the idea of starting a Books for Baghdad program on campus to the group, and, he says, the support was overwhelming. "It was such a good fit between their goals and my own," he adds.
Alex Cornwall '06, SADACA president and founding member, says the program helps remind students here of the human story behind the headlines about Iraq and the war. "It humanizes the situation, and makes you think about the fact that there are students in Baghdad trying to do the same things that college students here do all the time," says Cornwall, who is heading to the Middle East this summer to study Arabic.
The book drive has been under way since April, with drop boxes located in Wilson Commons, at the circulation desk in Rush Rhees Library, and at various book buy-back locations on campus. Poster displays at the locations tell more about the Books for Baghdad program and provide some historical background on the intellectual repression Iraqi citizens suffered under the former regime, as well as details on the current condition of the University of Baghdad library system.
"Every time I see a book in one of those boxes, it's like a little party. I get so excited," says Devin Opotzner '09, the events coordinator for SADACA.
Tobiason says for him the program resonates on a personal level and also speaks to the very ideals embodied by institutions of higher learning. "My favorite place in the world to be is sitting in the library with nothing better to do than spend a few hours reading books. I think how fortunate we are to have that opportunity.
For more details on the effort and how to contribute, e-mail urbooksforbaghdad@gmail.com.
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