A ‘suspicious-looking package’ in my safe haven

“One of AUC’s landscape workers reported to AUC Security the discovery of a suspicious-looking package in a garden near the bus terminal entrance,” said Brian MacDougall, the Executive Vice-President for Administration and Finance, in an email that was sent to the AUC community earlier this week.

He then added that the package did not contain anything dangerous.

However, students and certain security members are saying that it was an actual bomb and that they managed to defuse it.

Some students even managed to take pictures of the crude device and post them on different social media platforms.

I believe that this is something that shouldn’t be ignored. The administration should be completely transparent with the AUC community. We deserve to know for sure whether it was a bomb or not.

I find it very strange that the “suspicious-looking package” was discovered by a landscape worker and not a security member. What if this worker hadn’t been assigned to work in that area of campus that day? What could have happened then?

Now, whether it was a bomb or not, just the thought of finding something like that on campus frightens many.

Ever since the January 25 Revolution, Egypt has suffered instability and insecurity.

Hits home

But one never realizes just how dangerous the situation really is until it hits home.

I live on campus so this “suspicious-looking package” or “bomb” wasn’t just found in my university, it was also found in the place I’ve been calling home for more than three years.

Given that bombs are going off more frequently in Cairo and elsewhere – a bomb caused material damage near Talaat Harb, while an improvised explosive device on the road to Agami killed one person today – one can’t help but wonder how safe campus really is.

The New Cairo campus is laid out across several acres of land and is very easily accessible.

The question poses itself: Is our security team trained or equipped to meet these new threats? If they are unarmed, can they deal with armed infiltrators?

These are the questions that quickly came to mind when I read that a “suspicious-looking package” was found on campus.

Clearly the university needs to implement stringent security measures to ensure that we as students, and for some of us who are residents, are 100 percent safe.

They need to show us or tell us about these measures once they take them because until then I have no idea whether I should feel safe even walking around campus or not.

A bomb did explode in front of the German University in Cairo just down the road, after all; let’s not repeat that scenario at AUC.

Maram Chalabi
Editor-in-Chief