After waking up at 6am, to get a 7am bus to be on campus at 8am…finding out I‘ve been locked out by my fellow peers is just not how I want to start the day. In the furious row over a consecutive 7% increase in tuition fees, student protests at the American University in Cairo escalated to chaining gates shut, for the second time this week at the New Cairo campus yesterday. Lecturers students and campus staff were forced from attending their place of work and study.
Not happy in the slightest, as I had prepared avidly for an Arabic test that day, I approached the gates to demand answers. Three students on the other side of the gates, firmly protesting, hesitantly tell me they are: Muhamour an Engineering student, Mohamed Galel who is working for the student union and Escondor whose fees were paid for by a scholarship, and a headstrong freshman named Omer. The students did not wish to give any further information…or confirm correct spellings for their names, but were adamant when I asked why the gates were shut: ‘we have a petition of 2,000 signatures…students are with us.’ I point out that 2,000 signatures is only a third of the student population, and also that if they have paid their fees already, it has probably already been spent. ‘ – I didn’t pay the fees’ quips Mohamed, looking very unsure of himself.
Getting back to the main issue – why I can’t get to my lessons - they reply ‘it was a peaceful protest’ putting their faces up to the gate bars. ‘AUC didn’t answer us; they are not listening to us.’ Another protester cries out: ‘I don’t have a voice!’ I point out he clearly does as he has just used it…I also ask why on earth have they waited until now? Three weeks into term? - ‘No idea why.’ At least they are all well-rehearsed for questioning.
I ask a security guard why they are letting students shut the gates ‘we can’t stop them.’ Omer confirms ‘Security can’t do anything; they are worried about losing their jobs if they argue with us.’ As an email from the AUC president confirmed later on in the day: ‘[security] are, as always, well-trained but unarmed, instructed to avoid altercations with members of the AUC community.’ Looks like I am on my own in attempting to attend my lessons.
I continue to question the legitimacy of the protest. They claim they have checked the petition numbers and tell me to ‘talk to Lisa’, the president of AUC, they claim the student union, 'black and red camps' (different political sections of the student union...) are involved, ‘we have nothing else we can do but chain the gates closed.’ I stand my ground and question why they should dictate by force that it is within my best interests to miss my lessons today. ‘3,500 support us. We tried lots of things.’…Interesting the petition number has risen by 1,000 signatures in the last five minutes. The claims go on as the protesters desperately try to defend their thoughtless barricading of the university. To vast media coverage claims of international and national widespread coverage, listing T.V channels and radio stations and newspapers who support them, to telling me that AUC ‘gave refunds 7 years ago’ this might be true, but I have found no evidence for it, and it does state on the online AUC student finance breakdown: ‘new undergraduate students are not entitled to refunds’…
In one last bout of debate, the trio of protesters take a slightly more logical approach: ‘We want a freeze on prices, after 300 students went to the president with a petition which was just ripped up.’ - What about the board of trustees? ‘We went to the president and to the board of trustees; we tried a lot of other things first.’ They say wearily, the words of clearly desperately impoverished students, from behind Gucci sunglasses.
Finally I reign them back in, to expose the fault in their oh-so-seemingly-noble cause. ‘So, tell me again what exactly gives YOU the right to stop ME from gaining MY education?’
Silence. They look to each other for comebacks, but as I well know, there is none sufficient.
‘O.K, you can go to your lesson. I talked to security, you can climb over.’ Wow, thanks boys.
I find an easy spot to hop over, but not before coming across some angry staff members trying also, to climb over. ‘We are just trying to go to work, why are you doing this!’ They yell at the lost looking boys. Irate and upset the employees refuse to let me take their names, as they embarrassingly have to climb over fences to get to their places of work.
Two more library employees follow me over the fence too, with the help of the three protesting boys who had followed me in attempted reassurance, from the front gate.
Once inside, of course there are no lessons, but I can still use the library. I feel somewhat triumphant in claiming some of my educational rights back.
Inside, occasional wanderers pass, run up and ask me: how did you get in?! It feels like I’m a lucky survivor of a zombie apocalypse as I walk the deserted campus, looking for other survivors.
I talk to Dorina Dobre, a criminology final year student who lives on campus: ‘I don’t feel it’s my cause because I’m study abroad, they are protesting for the majority studying here for 4 years. I’m not really happy, but it’s their right.’ And Jeff Kelly, economics and international development, Masters student who also hopped the fence: ‘completely agree with the cause but couldn’t disagree more with the methods, this is robbing students of their right and opportunity for education.’
The student union president, Taher El-Moetazbellah, said to Ahram online: ‘the recent escalation is the administration’s fault for not cooperating or acting on student concerns. However, he rejected the means by which the students expressed their protest, blocking campus entrances’. However in stark contradiction, posted on the S.U facebook page on Wednesday before the last protest, is the status: ‘Can You feel it ? it is happening, only through the hardest times and the disturbing moments of division were the students [are] able for once to understand the true essence and the importance of UNITY. Now we are back as one, And this has just started. The Student union fully supports this movement and will participate in future escalations once this gains general consensus. Rights are earned, not granted.’ Not only is their grammar awful, but as I can speak for myself; as an opposing student, the entire student body is most certainly not united on this issue.
Wondering further if these protesters are so inflicted with 7% increases, I found out in 2011/2012, for a first year undergraduate, Egyptian student, tuition fees for the year were 3,085LE for one credit hour. So with the 7% rise that is an extra 216LE… per credit hour. Also, after finding out the inflation rate in Egypt in January was 9.2% and the last inflation rate statistics show a 6.3% general inflation rate in Egypt for August (Business Egypt)…is 7% increase in tuition fees really an admiral, courageous protest, as the boys at the gate were, at least when I first approached them, hell bent on telling themselves and me they are.
Will AUC give into this protest to resume normalcy? It certainly was not planning to, as on 19th September an email from ‘News at AUC’ sent to all students said: ‘The University is not closing the campus tomorrow, and all classes and activities will resume as normal.’ News at AUC also responded to the first lock-in protests on the 16th Sept by saying: ‘The attempt to close the campus is in direct violation of University policy and will not be tolerated...The University's Freedom of Expression policy protects the rights of all members of the community to express their views without infringing on the rights of others.’ And later on, the 20th of September: ‘permanent seats for student representatives [are given] in nearly all the management committees of the University…I would also like to apologize on behalf of the University to those…whose rights to hold and express their own opinions have been inhibited. This is not what AUC stands for.’
Students also took to twitter to discuss the protests, user: Gigi Ibrahim @Gsquare86said: AUC’s admin is just like the Egyptian government = CORRUPTED and students are fighting for their rights of transparency & accountability.’ Whilst Marie-France Lakah @mflakah didn’t quite agree tweeting: ‘I am pro-strikes and I believe #Auc is robbing us. And you have a valid cause. But you lost me at #OccupyAUC’ (Occupy AUC refers to the protest movement.)
To twitter user Ahmed El Lozy @ellozy who said: ‘Tell me again, how does forcing students to stand outside a campus in the middle of the desert harm the administration?’
By 10.30am, I and a handful of other apocalypse survivors holding up in the library were told to leave the campus. An email on the 20th September from the president confirmed: ‘The attempt by students to block the gates of the New Cairo Campus has created a dangerous situation in the streets around the campus’ so we left to catch fleeing buses.
So have these students won? Thanks to their lack of organization, research and zero understanding of how democratic protesting is operated, I highly doubt, and sincerely hope that AUC does not give into this moronic parade of so-called revolutionary behaviour. It is not revolutionary, and it is certainly not democratic, it is the complete opposite of democracy for a radical minority to force compliance from everyone at AUC with their demands…that is dictatorship, to claim it is for the good of the majority is communism. Let’s hope these fabulously stylish, misguided protesters realise this before I, or anybody else misses out on more of their education.
Sources:
http://www.aucegypt.edu/students/finaff/fees/Documents/TuitionFeesfor1112.pdf
http://www1.aucegypt.edu/catalog04/undergrad/studfin/studfin.html
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/53353.aspx
https://www.facebook.com/pages/AUC-Student-Union/127843051327
https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/%23occupyauc
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