Thursday afternoon in Seigle Hall, Washington University students bribed border patrol officers, committed theft, prostituted themselves and even carried out murder.

Students assumed the role of African refugees seeking asylum in Israel as part of the International Leadership Program freshman seminar’s two-day event “Right to Refuge? The Israeli Politics of African Asylum.”

ILP students organized the event after learning about it in their Migration Stories class and hoped to raise awareness about what they saw as an under-publicized issue in the U.S.

“We hear so much about migration in the context of the U.S., and we don’t think about these problems as they exist in other parts of the world,” freshman Adam Hoffman, a member of ILP, said. “Israel is uniquely interesting…merely because it tries to be a center for Jewish refugees. When that original mission comes into conflict with broad humanitarian conflicts, I think it’s a pretty interesting topic.”

The ILP simulation required groups of students to make decisions as their journey for asylum progressed. For example, at one juncture, students were faced with an Egyptian military outpost. Their choices were to bribe the outpost employee, buy fake papers or try to sneak past the post at night. Other decisions the students faced included whether or not to use a smuggler to get into Israel and how to escape from the Bedouin band that had kidnapped them.

The profiles students received provided basic information on each refugee’s background, including age, sexuality, socioeconomic status and cash on hand. However, each refugee also had a unique power, such as the ability to beg, steal, prostitute or, for one profile that was of an ex-militant, even murder.

The simulation consisted of several rounds. Each round, the six different profile groups had to make a decision, and the simulation leader would tell them the result of their decision. According to ILP members, the simulation was intended to show students what refugees face as they try to reach Israel.

In the end, only four of the six groups actually made it to Israel, and only one of them actually received asylum.

Senior Julia Berk said the simulation was an educational and informative experience.

“It just alerted me to a lot of the issues that I never thought of,” Berk said. “You think of Israel as a place of hope and freedom…[that] it’s the land of freedom for everyone, but evidently not. It has the same kinds of issues that any other country would.”

Freshman Erica Achepohl, a member of ILP, said she thought the simulation raised important questions about the right to asylum.

“This subject is a question of state’s rights versus individual rights and the right of the individual to live a safe and secure life versus the right of the state to determine who it gives benefits to,” Acepohl said.