A United Student Body is Capable of Change

There’s no better way to understand current events than to take a look back at history.

So, I decided to visit The Caravan archives and go through AUC news since the 1950s.

I came across a number of articles which were familiar – a funny flashback, had it not been so sad.

I came across the first issue of Fall 1976 and the top headline read, Registration irritates staff, infuriates students. Waiting “endlessly” was only part of the description, and the article ended with the very common quote, then said by a department staff member, “if you don’t like it here you can leave the university”.

The headline of the first issue of Fall 1980 read Tuition increase L.E. 100, followed by an article with the VP for Student Affairs explaining that inflation justified the hike.

He also said it would be unfair to apply the increase to the new students only, and that students should “share the responsibility with the University”.

In an article published in 1987, the headlines were Residents’ increasing dissatisfaction with hostel: An Awful Lot for Awful Little and DDC call for Student Participation.

In the first article a girl was quoted saying that she lives in the dorms because it’s safer, but that she believes the university is taking advantage of that and making them pay so much for “nothing in return”.

To end the historical flashback, allow me one more funny addition, on that same front-page, a picture of an entrance before and after the trustees’ visit was titled Where have the flowers gone?.

I see the same modern-day romanticizing of “sharing the responsibility” only when it comes to paying the price for the sake of finding a solution, but not when it comes to ‘sharing’ in the decision- making process.

I see the historically inefficient registration system. I see the same unacceptable attitude of “if you don’t like it, leave” – now from administrators. I see myself in that girl’s discontent; she said in 1987 exactly what I say today.

I see the hypocrisy when the Trustees visit. I see the workers of AUC calling on the students for help because they know no one else will. I see a cycle that needs to be broken – a cycle of corruption and failure.

In the past fours years, I’ve been among hundreds of students who have struggled to make progress in resolving some of the above issues.

We might have carried out gate closures, and agreed to short-term tuition caps, achieved short-term goals – such as pressuring AUC to step back from a decision, and sometimes we did not succeed.

But the one thing I genuinely learned in these four years is not that solutions are too difficult – but that a unified body full- heartedly dedicated to change is truly capable.

Inflation and deficit is challenging – whether it is as real as we are told or not–but these financial burdens can be overcome without greater costs on the students.

I don’t specifically mean monetary costs; I mean what’s more important – quality of education and services. Know that you shouldn’t have to pay the extra costs the way you do now.

I promise everyone reading this that AUC students – very often viewed by outsiders as spoiled teenagers – can change this.

I know so many of you who have solutions for the workers, registration, services, and more. Simply put, do not feel hopeless – “yes we can”.

I need you to believe that you are empowered.

If we don’t have the spirit, awareness, and sense of responsibility to take matters into our own hands and change them -hereandnow-thenhowarewe going to do the same for Egypt?

Yasmin Hashim
Political Science Senior