No Russian in the hallway, please
Photo: Eliad Levy
School bans Arabic, Russian in hallways
Sign prohibiting conversations in foreign languages stirs storm among nursing students at Barzilai Medical Center. 'How can someone forbid me from speaking in my mother tongue?' asks angry student
Controversy at the School of Nursing at the Barzilai Medical Center. A new instruction posted throughout the corridors of the Ashkelon facility, prohibiting students from speaking foreign languages within school bounds, has stirred a storm among Russian and Arabic-speaking students.
"Everybody knows it is specifically targeting Russian and Arab nurses," one student told Ynet.
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In the past, CEO of Barzilai Medical Center Shimon Scharf issued an instruction prohibiting doctors and nurses from speaking Russian while treating patients. The decision came following repeated complaints by patients, who claimed the medical staff was conversing in Russian while providing medical care.
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The upset students approached the hospital management, and were told that the sign was put up in accordance with existing instructions and hospital regulations.
"The management told one of the students that they don’t want to hear any Russian or Arabic in the corridors, and if students want to talk amongst themselves, they should do so in Hebrew," a nursing student noted angrily.
"This is just awful, I don't speak a foreign language, but I don’t think its right to force someone to speak in a certain language," she added.
'Infringement of freedom of expression'
On Thursday, after school ended, a group of students gathered in the dorm room and decided to form a Facebook group to voice their frustration."We are looking into the legality of the matter, because it seems like an infringement of freedom of expression," one of the protest leaders said.
A senior students, who is participating in the struggle, spoke of the feelings of humiliation. "I arrived to Israel when I was 30 and spoke Russian most of my life. My little daughter comes home from school telling me they called her a 'stinky Russian' in class. It's almost the same thing."
Another student noted that out of the 39 students in class, only six are Israeli, and the rest are Russian and Arab. "When we saw the announcement it hurt us deeply. At first, we thought it was a joke," she said, adding that she does not know what to do going forward.
"Will it be forbidden to speak Russian in the hallways? How exactly am I supposed to talk to my family, or friends? How can someone forbid me from speaking in my mother tongue?"
While many students seemed upset by the ban, a number of nursing students expressed satisfaction with the new instruction, telling their fellow students, "It's not pleasant to hear you speak this way.
Barzilai Medical Center stated in response: "With all due respect, the 'complaint' testifies of a reading comprehension problem. All it says in the instruction, which has been issued a long time ago, is that in order not to jeopardize the lives of patients, and for courtesy reasons, the staff is prohibited from discussing matters pertaining to the patient in front of him, in a language he does not understand. The instruction was reemphasized after additional complaints were made."
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