Last update - 00:00 29/02/2008
Sapir College licks its wounds after student killed by rocket
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
Few students attended classes at Sapir College in Sderot on Thursday, the day after fellow student Roni Yihye was killed by a rocket. But those who did come said they planned to continue at the college.
However, Sapir's management has noted a troubling plunge in registration for next year over recent weeks.
"It's still early days," said college director-general Dr. Nehami Paz, "but we already have 300 fewer registrations than last year at this time."
Some 1,300 students started this academic year at the college, a similar number to last year, which was a record year. Until two years ago, when the rocket fire increased, registration rose by almost 10 percent annually.
But some 13 percent of Sapir's students in the first semester did not renew their registration for the second term, twice as many as usual, said Paz.
An improvised monument of piled stones was set up for Yihye yesterday, and an Israeli flag was hung on a nearby tree.
"First the rockets fell only in the surrounding area. But yesterday, it was like a rain of rockets aimed straight at us," said Tal Zur, an industrial management student.
"But people also know they could be caught anywhere," he added. "Only two weeks ago, there was a suicide bombing in Dimona."
"Only three students attended my lecture [yesterday], out of almost 30," said Hila Tahar-Yitzhak, an economics lecturer. "Some of them were planning to go to Yihye's funeral, others took a day off to calm down. But they know that statistically, the chance of getting killed in a traffic accident is higher. My students asked me to email them the material and said they would return next week."
The cafeteria was also sparsely populated, and journalists occupied most of the tables. Neta Lev, a cinema student who works in the cafeteria in the administration building, brought a first aid kit with her. "Now I'm ready to go anywhere if needed," she said.
Batel Khoury, a first year technological marketing student, came out of a lecture and hurried to her car to return to her home in Netivot. "I'd rather not stand in the parking lot for a long time now," she said with a nervous smile.
Most of the college's classrooms are not fortified, and on order from the Israel Defense
Forces Home Front Command, some 40 classrooms and a third of the laboratories are not in use, because they are vulnerable to rockets and too far from a protected area.
"There's a feeling that the government has abandoned all the residents of the south," said Mordechai Algrabli, a logistics student. "I deeply sympathize with the people who live with it all the time. We see so many social injustices. This situation could only exist in the periphery. That's why nobody gives a damn. And the army's assassination policy is useless."
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