History buffs, best friends earn full-ride scholarships

By L.E. Andres
Published: September 10, 2007

As backpacks swell with new school supplies and kids master new locker combinations in the first few weeks of school, chances are that someone will assign the much-maligned summer vacation essay.

If Paul Michel or Mohammad Rasool, both 17, write theirs, it could go something like this:

Competed at National History Day on the campus of the University of Maryland in June, snagged third place in the country for a team project on the Arab-Israeli conflict and won a full-ride scholarship to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

For the record, the David Van Tassel Founder Award in the past has awarded only a single all-expenses-paid trip to college, but this year the committee just couldn’t choose between the two friends.

The award is named for the man who founded National History Day.

The academic competition requires entrants to spend free time, which they could otherwise use to read “Harry Potter” or practice soccer drills, poring over research materials, tracking down pertinent interview subjects and developing a strategy for ascending the regional and state levels to land at nationals.

Students present their work in various formats - including performance and research papers - and then defend those efforts to a panel of judges.

Each year, Case Western awards a single, full scholarship in the former professor’s name. Except this year.

Paul, who goes to Monticello High School, and Mohammad, who attends Albemarle High, both have 4.0 GPAs and identical SAT scores, plus resumes littered with extracurricular activities and leadership positions.

“We were just so torn,” said Molly Berger, associate dean of the college of arts and sciences at Case Western Reserve University and a member of the committee that awarded the scholarships. “The last thing we wanted to do was go to a third choice.”

The top two choices are ecstatic, and still sound a little dazed when they relive the shocking moment of the announcement.

The last award of the ceremony, and the biggest prize, was a scholarship renewable for four years and valued in excess of $120,000.

“We’re really thankful for this opportunity, and I get to share it with one of my best friends,” Mohammad said. “We’re really lucky.”

Berger said the Tassel scholarship applications are treated as admissions materials, and only applicants who meet the school’s admission’s criteria can win.

The project

Paul and Mohammad have competed on history teams together for five years, ever since becoming friends at Burley Middle School in seventh grade.

The now high school seniors give credit to the history team, coached by Paul’s mom, Madeline Michel, for preserving their friendship after district lines sent them to different high schools.

Paul and Mohammad finish each other’s sentences, employ idiosyncratic handshakes and share inside jokes. Their back-and-forth banter can be dizzying. They want to room together in college and keep playing soccer together. They bat around the idea of being twins, they share so much.

This year, Paul, Mohammad and their three teammates interpreted the competition’s “triumph and tragedy” theme by examining the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“In this project you have the triumph of the Jewish people acquiring their own homeland in Israel after the Holocaust. And then you have the tragedy of the Palestinian exile,” Mohammad said.

Their research led them to William B. Quandt at the University of Virginia’s Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics, and Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States, as well as other scholars.

Despite what could have, at times, seemed like painstaking effort, the long hours paid dividends.

“It gave us hope that this problem could be resolved,” Mohammad said.

Even though the teens have a well-established habit of examining sensitive issues through a prism of academia, the team’s 2007 topic could appear to be particularly challenging. While Paul’s Jewish faith and Mohammad’s Muslim beliefs seem to illustrate both sides of the conflict, the pair said their religious divergences didn’t factor into the project and haven’t played a significant role in their friendship.

“In my family, it’s ‘accept everyone,’” Paul said. “It’s never been an issue. We’re open about it, but I respect his beliefs, he respects my beliefs, and that’s just how it is.”

“We’ve had a lot of get-togethers at each other’s houses,” Mohammad said. “Discussions come up casually. … It never really came up as an obstacle. We’ve just been friends.”

Besides, Paul points out, the conclusion they drew from their research while preparing for competition is that the struggle isn’t defined by its religious connotations: European imperialism and national ambitions are more to blame.

“It’s people, and not beliefs, that are making this conflict,” Paul said. “It’s not a Jewish-Muslim conflict, it’s a territorial and colonial conflict,” Paul said.