University to aid Afghan
challenges others to join effort
by Kristen Rasmussen
The Providence Journal
About 1,650 letters left the
Roger Williams University
mailroom on Friday as part of the
school’s recent announcement
that it is challenging all institu
tions of higher learning nation
wide to follow its lead and offer
academic scholarships to Afghan
women.
The letters are ad
dressed to the edi
tors of the country’s
major newspapers
This week, a similar
letter will be elec-
tronically sent to of-
ficials
nation’s 4,500 col-
leges and universi-
ties. The messages
are co-signed by university Presi
dent Roy J. Nirschel and his wife,
Paula
“Roger Williams University in
Bristol, Rhode Island, is pleased
to be the first university in the
country to offer a full scholar
ship-tuition, room and board-to
an Afghan woman,” the letter
states.
“In this small way, we can
make a difference. And by this
act we challenge all of American
higher education-proportionate
to a college’s or university's size
and endowment-to do likewise
and invest in rebuilding Afghani
stan as a model society in the
twenty-first century.”
The establishment of the schol
arship is the brainchild of Paula
Nirschel, a personal friend of
Providence, R. 1., resident and
Afghan expatriate Fatima
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Gailani. The two women became
friends in November, when
Gailani’s story gained national
attention, Paula Nirschel said.
Her interaction with Gailani -
who said she plans to return
home to help restore peace and
women’s equality to Afghanistan
- led Nirschel to the conclusion
that longstanding societies can
only be built or improved by pro
"In this small wa
difference.... we challenge all of American
higher education. ..to do likewise and invest
in rebuilding Afghanistan as a model soci
ety in the twenty-first century. ’’
viding educational opportunities
for their citizens.
Challenging other academic
institutions to offer these educa
tional opportunities augments
what Roger Williams can and
will do to help, Paula and Roy
Nirschel said.
“Even educating a few Afghan
women and giving them their
wings and sending them back to
help their country would be won
derful,” Paula Nirschel said.
“Even if only 10 percent of
universities participated, that
would still be 500 Afghan women
or men attending college,” her
husband added.
The scholarship will be
awarded based on the recommen
dation of Gailani, Paula Nirschel
said. The scholarships are worth
about $125,000 over four years
and will be awarded to women
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Friday, Febuary 8, 2002
women,
who plan to return to their home
country, she said.
The scholarship will be
awarded to one student each year,
paving the way for the presence
of four Afghan women on cam
pus at a time, Roy Nirschel said.
No end has been set for the pro-
gram, he said.
The first scholarship will be
awarded to a student enrolling in
the fall, his wife said.
But young Afghan
women will not be the
only ones to benefit from
the scholarship program,
those involved said.
“It will be a reciprocal
benefit to have women
from Afghanistan edu
cate us,” said Rebecca
Leuchak, assistant pro-
fessor of art and architec
tural history at Roger Williams.
“This is a growing opportunity
for our community, as well as for
the women coming over.”
And establishing relationships
in the country helps further cata
pult the university onto the glo
bal stage - one of the school’s
main aims, Roy Nifschel said.
“We want to become an in
creasingly global university,” he
said. “We are very proud of be
ing in Bristol and proud of being
in Rhode Island, but we are also
part of a bigger, broader society.”
But to Gailani - who said she
deeply loves her homeland de
spite its horrid treatment of
women in the past - the most im
portant beneficiaries are the
most obvious ones: the Afghan
women who will receive a higher
education and the citizens whom
they return to help.
www.meridianonco((eaeavenue.com
Table tennis?ln Texas, school
ventures into sport
by Paul Bourgeois
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Table tennis may be the second most popular sport
in the world, but let’s face facts: We’re not IN the world.
We’re in Texas, and in Texas, football rules - real foot
ball, not soccer.
But Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth has
bravely taken the lead and is the first university in North
Texas to field (or to “table”) a varsity table-tennis
Coach Christian Lillieroos said he knows that he’s
in an uphill battle. Not as a coach. That’s easy. The
battle is to sell table tennis as a real sport that people
might want to see and support, he said.
“People don’t realize,” he said, “that table tennis
might be the most physically demanding sport there
Wesleyan is in the Texas Division of the National
Collegiate Table Tennis Association. The other teams
in the division include the University of Texas at Aus
tin, Rice University in Houston, Baylor University in
Waco, the University of Houston and Houston Com
munity College.
Texas Wesleyan President Harold Jeffcoat said table
tennis is a good fit for the university.
“It seemed like a good opportunity for Texas
Wesleyan to do something different, to get our name
out there in a different way. It’s not expensive, and it’s
something we could do well in a very short time,” he
said.
Table tennis is part of a new approach to sports at
Wesleyan, which pulled itself from National Collegiate
Athletic Association Division II competition in the
summer.
Now, the university prefers more sports and more
participants but for less money. This year, Jeffcoat cut
all athletic scholarships and the school dropped to Di
vision 111 because the university was facing financial
problems. Several coaches and students on athletic
scholarships moved to other colleges and universities.
The table-tennis program is expected to cost only
about $40,000 and is open to almost everyone.
Wesleyan’s first season doesn’t start until mid-Janu
ary, but already the three-member varsity is paddling
the competition. It won a gold medal last month at a
tournament in Baltimore. . .
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Lillieroos coached the U.S. National team in 1997-98
and is well known in world table-tennis circles. It was
expected that Lillieroos would attract top players, but
Jeffcoat said he is surprised at the caliber of the players
who have signed on.
The players include: Jasna Reed, Olympic medalist
in 1988, three-time Olympian and two-time European
champion who competed for the USA in the 2000
Sydney Olympics; Rasvan Cretu, a five-time Romanian
national champion who played for the United States in
the 1997 Birmingham World Championships; and Idan
Levi, an Israeli junior national team member. Six other
players are on the junior varsity.
Compared with the National Collegiate Athletic As
sociation, National Collegiate Table Tennis Association
rules are loose. Team membership is open to any school
employee or student - full time, part time, exchange,
undergrad or graduate.
And Jeffcoat said that could be another plus. With an
emphasis on building Wesleyan's graduate and interna
tional programs, he said it can’t hurt to have a competi
tive sport with a large international following that any
student can play. In the National Collegiate Table Ten
nis Association, the play is co-ed.
Jeffcoat said sports play an important part in student
life and in helping spread knowledge and interest in
Wesleyan.
The university needs to spread some basic knowledge
of table tennis, Lillieroos said.
But first, it needs to shake any notion that table tennis
and Ping Pong are the same thing. Table tennis players
bristle at the idea that the two are alike.
The rules are different. The table tennis ball is two
millimeters larger. Games are played to 11. The paddles
are also different and are capable of slamming the ball
at 100 mph with spins clocked at 9,000 rpm.
But the biggest difference is with the athletes,
Lillieroos said.
He said comparing Ping Pong to table tennis is like
comparing softball to baseball.
‘Table tennis is the second-largest sport in terms of
participation in the world. It's second only to soccer,”
he said.
“It also is very physical. In table-tennis developed
countries like Sweden, China, Germany, Korea, France
and Croatia, table-tennis athletes on average ate the most
physically fit among all sports,” Lillieroos said.
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