Exchange Program

The University of Baltimore's School of Law and a university in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, Iraq, have signed the first formal partnership between law schools in the two countries, officials announced yesterday. Under the agreement, UB law students might one day study in Iraq - where the rule of law was enshrined in the Code of Hammurabi more than 4,000 years ago. However, for security reasons, the first step will more likely be to bring Iraqis here for graduate legal study and research, said the law school's dean, Phillip J. Closius.

One highlight of Dutch teacher Kees van Kemenade's first trip to the United States was a visit to Harpers Ferry, W.Va., site of the 1859 abolitionist raid by John Brown. Van Kemenade always tells his students about it during American history classes. "To be in a spot where something took place makes all the difference in the world," he said. "It all comes alive." Van Kemenade wants to include a trip to Harpers Ferry if he can set up a student exchange with Annapolis Area Christian School's upper school.

Every month, Running Brook Elementary School in Columbia holds a book swap for its students. Children are asked to bring books from home that they have read. The books then become part of an exchange program.

A Glen Burnie High School teacher will spend six weeks in Morocco this fall, learning how students who speak French and Arabic soak up the nuances of yet another language -- English. Erin Sullivan, 32, was awarded an all-expenses-paid trip last month as part of the Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange program operated by the U.S. State Department. She said she applied because she wanted to learn where her students in the school's rapidly expanding English for Speakers of Other Languages program get their drive and discipline.

Nanibah Showa and Erica Murphy stood next to each other in theater class at Glenelg Country School yesterday and giggled with a comfort that usually takes friends years to build. A week ago, the 14-year-olds were strangers. But a new exchange program brought Nanibah to the private school in Howard County from her home school in Arizona, and the two girls now say they will stay in touch after the program ends Saturday. "It's nice to have someone here ... I can hang out with," said Erica, a ninth-grader from Ellicott City, who in April will join 11 other students from Glenelg Country School at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Ariz.

The young redhead with the stylish black backpack and heart-shaped earrings had come a long way to be standing at Monroe and Ramsay streets in Southwest Baltimore, waiting her turn outside the big white van. For years, she'd put off this moment: signing up herself and her husband for the city's needle exchange program. The couple -- their street names are Pebbles and Bam-Bam, a nod to the Flintstones television characters -- have been injecting heroin since they were 17, she said. They've been sharing used syringes with others and attempting to clean them with water and bleach between uses, rather than coming to the exchange for new ones, even though they were aware of the serious health risks in sharing.

I THOUGHT THAT, in today's column, I would heal the nation. The nation suffered a wound during the recent presidential election as a result of the rift between the red states -- defined as "states where 'foreign cuisine' pretty much means Pizza Hut" -- and the blue states, defined as "states that believe they are smarter than the red states, despite the fact that it takes the average blue-state resident 15 minutes to order one cup of coffee." Some blue-state residents are so upset about the election that they're talking about moving to Canada, which is technically a foreign nation.

Prodded by a highly critical court ruling, a State Department panel reversed itself and voted unanimously yesterday to allow a South Carolina firm to resume bringing foreign students to the United States to learn the hospitality industry. In a nine-page decision and 44-page recap of its findings in the case, the three-member panel concluded that its earlier decision to bar the American Hospitality Academy's participation in the J-1 exchange program was not supported by the facts. While AHA acknowledged that it had violated program requirements, the panel said many problems had been corrected and described the revocation action as "extreme."

A State Department panel heard conflicting assessments yesterday of a South Carolina-based company that brought thousands of foreign students to the United States under a cultural exchange program. "You can dress it up anyway you want," said Stanley Colvin, who heads the State Department bureau that overseas the exchange program. "The way this is operating, it is not a bona fide training program." Colvin was testifying about the American Hospitality Academy, a Hilton Head company that is trying to win back its right to bring foreign-exchange students to the United States under the J-1 visa program.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. State Department consultant testified yesterday that a South Carolina restaurant operator referred to foreign exchange students who signed up for hospitality management training as "slave labor." Yael Nagler, who was hired by the State Department to examine the South Carolina and Florida operations of the American Hospitality Academy, told a three-member panel that other hotel and resort managers told her that AHA trainees had been used as cheap labor to fill low-level, hard-to-fill positions.