Laaltain

Students protest at Quaid-e-Azam University

12 جولائی، 2012

Recent­ly, there was a stand­off between stu­dents and the Quaid-e-Azam Uni­ver­si­ty, Islam­abad, admin­is­tra­tion. The stu­dents were protest­ing against increas­ing fees and demand­ing bet­ter facil­i­ties on the cam­pus. Since the uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tion was ignor­ing their demands, the stu­dents argued, they had decid­ed to set up Quaid­i­ans Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion (QSF), a stu­dent body that would work to pro­tect the rights of the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. The protest­ing stu­dents demand­ed that the uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tion stop wide­spread cor­rup­tion and rec­og­nize QSF as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive stu­dent body. The uni­ver­si­ty man­age­ment remained unre­spon­sive to stu­dents’ legit­i­mate demands and kept on employ­ing the delay­ing tac­tics for months.

This stale­mate even­tu­al­ly led to can­cel­la­tion of an inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on the cam­pus, as the stu­dents broke into the venue and start­ed chant­i­ng slo­gans. Fol­low­ing the inci­dent, the admin­is­tra­tion respond­ed aggres­sive­ly, expelling 11 stu­dents from the uni­ver­si­ty. After this there was a huge mobi­liza­tion of stu­dents against the admin deci­sion to which it ulti­mate­ly suc­cumbed and had to restore the expelled stu­dents.

If there is one les­son one can learn from the fias­co, it is this: stu­dents must have a plat­form where they may orga­nize them­selves and from which they may voice their griev­ances. Polit­i­cal process is always an anti­dote to vio­lence. The denial of on cam­pus pol­i­tics will result only in fur­ther such dead­locks, as men­tioned above, which will def­i­nite­ly harm the edu­ca­tion­al envi­ron­ment. It is high time the gov­ern­ment ful­filled its promis­es and removed the unjus­ti­fi­able ban on stu­dent unions.

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