Students' voices

---

While I feel some attachment towards my university, to its buildings and grounds, and to my fellow students and my professors, I also find myself unable to shake the feeling that the years I spent there felt like a heavy burden.

I keep trying to find reasons for these conflicting emotions, which I know are shared by many other students who missed a real sense of belonging, of really being an integral part of the institution. As I reflect, with sadness, on those years, certain scenes are indelibly etched in my memory. They pass through my mind as though captured and replayed on tape.

Scene one: The first day of the school year. My first impression is of the armored trucks of the central security forces lined in front of the university. Hundreds of students crowd around a narrow gate trying to get in.

Scene two: It is the same first day of school. I am standing with my colleagues staring at what is supposed to be our class schedule. We try hard to decipher it or to find someone to help us. No one is there to explain.

Scene three: It is still that same first day. One of the custodians is telling us that we are not allowed to sit in the corridors, nor on the stairs, nor in any empty lecture rooms. We ask, "so where are we allowed to sit?"

Scene four: I am walking through the university grounds with one of my colleagues. We stand in awe in front of the domed building of Cairo University wondering what it looks like inside. I try to enter the building. Immediately, an angry guard starts yelling at me, "What are you doing here? You are not allowed to enter this building!"

Scene five: I am searching for a book in the library of the Faculty of Arts. The librarian comes to tell me that it is forbidden to go near the shelves. I give her the name of the book, which, naturally, she does not find.

Scene six: It is my second year. We are sitting in the lecture hall. The professor of Arabic Language comes in, orders the male and female students to sit on separate benches, and threatens us with dismissal from his lectures if he finds the men and women sitting next to each other again.

Despite all that, as the years passed, something was changing inside me. I began to react differently to these negative experiences. I became more courageous in rejecting them.

I began to realize that it was my right and my duty to interact with these conditions and attitudes in a different manner. I became determined to gain a sense of belonging to the university and to try to make the most of my student years.

I dared to dream that we could change things rather than just endure them.

Scene seven: Students stand in front of Cairo University Dome carrying posters protesting the high cost of educaton, dilapidated dormitories, ever present security forces, as well as general conditions in the country such as the lack of democracy, rising prices, etc.

At first , the reaction of other students is negative. As we continue our protests the situation more students join despite the constant harassment of the security forces who summon most participants to the state security headquarters for questioning, and threaten them with failure in their exams or with expulsion.

Scene eight: This last school year. Tens of students protest in front of the Ministry of Higher Education under the umbrella of the Student Action Coordinating Committee called "Our University". The protest follows the removal by the university administration of 700 candidates for student unions elections for no legitimate reason. The protesters demand the repetition of student elections, a halt to the interrogation of the students, the revision of student activities' regulations, and the removal of the security apparatus from the university. The students are granted a meeting with the Minister who promises to consider their demands, but nothing happens.

Scene nine: This scene also takes place this year. A number of students gather around transparent ballot boxes on the occasion of the election of a "free" student union, in protest against the flagrant violations surrounding the formal student union elections. "Free" student elections take place in a large number of university faculties.

Although the vestiges of long years of suppression, fear and marginalization are difficult to overcome, we hope that the coming years will be somewhat less bleak for aspiring university students.