Protests on Campus/Tahrir, Classes, and Dates.

Hi everyone!

So unfortunately I have been 1. extremely busy and 2. without a computer and missing a camera battery for the past week or so.  That being said this post won't have any fun pictures on it but I promise I'll put some up on the next one to make up for it.

The past week has been very interesting to say the least.  The reignition of protests in Tahrir, the extrent to which I find myself enjoying my classes paired with the amount of work I have to do for each of them, and the tuition hike protests on campus have all been both suprising and sometimes upsetting.

First on all the protests in Tahrir seem to be more of a festival during the day compared to what I witnessed here last semester.  People in the square sell flags, facepainting, pretzels, and fresh squeezed orange and mango juice among other things.  When chants aren't heard from one side of the square music can be heard that is being played at the other corner.

Night is a whole differrent beast though.  As you may have seen on the news last Friday night the protestors stormed from Tahrir square to the Israeli embassy and attempted to enter a building.  In the end it took police intervention and a swat team to bring those inside the building out safely.  It seems unclear fromm the news reports I've read whether or not the Abassador was there at the time but nonetheless he and most of the staff have already hopped a plane back to Israel.

As I am writing this it's early Friday afternoon and protests are already beginning again in the square.  We will have to see what tongiht brings.


Protests have also been going on all this week at the University.  The initial platform for the protests there was to both show support for underpaid staff at the university and to protest a 9% tuition hike.

I was happy at first to see the protests and to support the causes they were fighting for.  Here's why.

1. The 9% tuition hike is being implemented without any reasons being given to the students as to why.  Back at UT when our programs were cut and our tuition increased we were by no means happy with it, but we knew that it was because of cut endowments and loss of a significant amout of funding from the state.  This was common knowledge in part because of regular updates we got by the President as to the reasons for why we had to cut back on expenses.  Although AUC is a private Univeristy I believe it owes its students this amount of transparency purely because of the significant investment that they have to make in this University towards their future.  If I was paying eight times the national income to go to a University I would like to know how and where changes where being made and why I needed to invest more money into these changes.

2. This call for transparency is actually a little more selfish but nonetheless something that I consider to be a viable argument.  As an American citizen part of my tax dollars are going towards the funding of USAID which in turn provides significant funding to the University.  As a taxpayer I deserve to know how my tax dollars are being spent.

3.  Much of the staff on campus are paid very low wages, work very long hours, and are hired on a monthly basis.  Once again as an institution whose creation was funded by USAID the university should be much more responsible in promoting a beneficial working environment in which an employee doesnt need to worry about whether or not he will have the money to feed his family next month.


Now here's why I have become completely disenchanted with the student protests over the past week.

1.  Students have taken to shouting "haramia" (theives) along with other distasteful slogans at the faculty and the President of the University. There is no way that this could open up the possibility open up the door to future negotiations between students and the heads of AUC.

2. Students have started to go into classrooms in an attempt to force other students attending class to join the protests.  I have to admit that it was pretty exciting at first when they came into my Arabic class in an attempt to have us join them, but reflecting upon the instance not only was the classtime I was paying for disrupting but my choice to go to classes that day was not respected.

3.  Here's the big one.  Yesterday students both marched to the Presidents office to should hateful slogans and took down an American flag on campus.  This is an insult to me and to every American that attends the school.  It is also extremely detrimental to the students cause because once again USAID FUNDS THE UNIVERSITY.  Taking down the flag of the nation that makes your education possible is one sure fire way to create another tuition hike next semester when it withdrawls even more if not all funding.

That being said I as well as other international students will be wearing red, white and blue to campus on Monday.  There is a word in Arabic for how I feel about this situation now.  Its "ziada"  which roughly translates to this escalation in plain stupidity as being "too much."


Now on to better news!

My classes are amaing.  I am enjoying every single one of them.  They are

The Political Economy of Poverty and Inequality:  So far we have been learning about the differences between Modernist Theory, Dependancy Theory, and Marxist theory as applied to international development.  Its extremely interesting to compare and contrast.

The History of Israel/Palestine:  Taught of course from a much different perspective than from the states.  Although it is my no means an antizionist class, the history behind the creation of the state of Israel and the Palestineans within it is....lets just stick with interesting for this as well.

Intro to Humanitarian Law:  This is actually a grad level survey course and long story short out teacher has a British accent and blue hair.  Time to question everything you know about the history and consequences of human rights!

Arabic 201:  I'm taking this a a refreser course to prepare me for third year Arabic at UT. The scary this is that I'm actually the most proficient speaker in the class.  Thank you Arabic House!

Sculpture:  WONDERFUL!!!!  We have to draw stuff for our homework assignments!

One last thing.

Now I know I'm going to get some eye rolls for this but I have started dating another international student here.  I know I said I wouldn't but what the hell.  Jan (pronounced Yan) and I seem to have similar personalities and interests and the converations have never been boring.  We absolutely enjoy eachothers company but since PDA (and I mean even hugs that last longer than five seconds) are banned in the dorms we don't get much a of a chance to actually act like we're dating.  We did however go to Cairo Jazz Club two days back to listen to some really great local bands play and I have to say I really enjoyed getting to dress up for it. : )

That's all for now.  More news and pictures to come soon!