ULLMAN, Wash., Sept. 26 — For the young men from the Middle East at the Washington State University campus here, the hardest phone calls are the ones from Mom.

"Every day at 6 a.m. my mom is calling me," said Hisham Taha, a freshman from Beirut who is studying electrical engineering. "She is crying: `Please come home. It will be safer for you in Lebanon than in Pullman.' "

But for now, Mr. Taha has decided to stay. To which his mother pleads, "Just don't go outside then."

Khaled Karash, a sophomore in business marketing, gets similar calls from his mother in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. "She's watching TV every day," Mr. Karash said, "and she says: `It's just not safe. Why take a chance?' "

Mr. Karash is going home this weekend.

These are days of stay-or-go decisions for a number of the roughly 40,000 college students from Arab nations who are in this country, as they face their parents' fears that anti-Arab incidents will worsen in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Only a small fraction of these students have left so far nationwide. But at the Washington State campus here, near the Idaho border, and at some other colleges and universities the proportion of Arab students leaving is high. Mr. Karash is one of 57 students who have decided to leave Washington State's Pullman campus, roughly half of the Arabs enrolled, university officials say.

About 30 Arab students have left American University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Missouri, the University of Colorado at Denver and California State University at Long Beach have each lost 25 Arab students. Scores of other campuses have reported smaller numbers of departing students.

Administrators and Arab students say the number is highest at the Washington State campus, which has 18,000 students, because the Arab students who are leaving are largely from the United Arab Emirates, where television coverage of the attacks has been intense. The university has courted students from wealthy Persian Gulf states partly because they represent an important source of income, since most have their out-of-state tuition paid in full by their governments or their families.

Abubaker Alblooki, who arrived only a few weeks ago to study business marketing, is returning to the United Arab Emirates on Friday at his parents' urging.

"We watch on the TV all these crowds, all this chanting in America of `U.S.A.! U.S.A.!' and it is scary and makes us afraid for our son," said Siddique Alblooki, a senior administrator at the electricity department in Abu Dhabi, in a telephone interview from his home.

"I know that people in the U.S.A. are mostly good people," the elder Mr. Alblooki said. "But there are some people who are very angry and have hate for Arabs."

No violence has been reported in Pullman, but several Arab students here said they had been harassed. Obscenities were spray-painted outside one student's apartment. Mr. Karash said he got in a scuffle outside the campus bookstore with a group of about 10 young men after one of them used an expletive in saying `you Arabians bombed our country.' "

Adly Natsheh, a 20-year-old senior from the West Bank majoring in international business, said he was with a friend who was speaking Arabic on his cellphone outside a supermarket a few nights ago when a white man ripped the phone out of his friend's hand and threw it on the pavement.

" `Speak in English next time,' " Mr. Natsheh said the man said.

He said his friend had been talking to his mother in the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Natsheh, who is co-chairman of the university's Middle Eastern Students Association, had displayed a Palestinian flag on his Dodge Durango without causing much of a stir here, but since Sept. 11, he said, the police have contacted him four times responding to complaints from other drivers that he was a suspicious character. He said the problems stopped when he replaced the flag decal with a Marine Corps "Semper Fi" sticker.

He and other Mideastern students emphasized that these incidents aside, fellow students and school administrators had been extremely helpful, refunding tuition for anyone leaving and offering escorts.

About 400 people turned out Sunday for an open house at the campus mosque to learn more about Islam.

"Most people have been so incredibly nice," said Mr. Natsheh, whose apartment walls are decorated with flags from Palestine and the United Arab Emirates, posters of Jerusalem mosques, a print of Vincent van Gogh's "Cafe Terrace at Night," a framed photograph of the Statue of Liberty and movie posters from "Pulp Fiction" and "Austin Powers."

"People are calling all day, saying, `Do you need anything, how can I help?' " Mr. Natsheh said. "That's one reason for staying."

His father, Abdul Halim Natsheh, who runs an import-export business in the West Bank, offered another reason in a telephone interview from Hebron.

"We are worried for our son, but last week we saw President Bush's speech, in which he said nobody should go out and hurt Muslims, American people are not this way," the elder Mr. Natsheh said. "I trust that what the president says is true."

The departure of the 57 students, most from the United Arab Emirates, has affected the campus in many ways.

The Middle Eastern Students Association canceled a barbecue and dance, and its intramural soccer team, named the Middle East Desert Storm, has disbanded.

Paul Svaren, the international enrollment manager, said Washington State was leaving slots open for the 57 students to return for the spring semester. "We've told them, `We really hope you come back in the spring,' " Mr. Svaren said.