Parents Caught between the Association and the Administration
By: Hussein El Moataz
@SE7S147
The Parents Association’s (PA) senior leadership, including the president and vice-president, resigned over the winter break following tensions with the University administration over the tuition fees spike.
“We resigned because the administration failed to take heed of our demands, primarily that the tuition fees should be calculated solely in Egyptian pounds,” former Vice-President of the PA Nesrine El-Mahdy told The Caravan.
The PA promptly held an election to choose new leadership: Ehab Mostafa, Khaled Mostafa, Mona Warah, Mona Nassef and Tarek Shafik.
The PA then continued to demand the reintroduction of scholarships, discounts on tuition for the second and third child of an enrolled family and that the Emergency Grant should apply for students who had registered for the previous Winter semester.
Relations between the association and administration soured even further after a group of 60 parents sought legal action over the tuition fees spike.
They filed a lawsuit at the Egyptian Administrative Court last month demanding that the University calculate tuition fees solely in Egyptian pounds.
This caused some confusion on campus.
“Immediately following the tuition spike, the PA did not clarify their position nor their intentions to us. They only started negotiations following pressure from the parents,” the Student Union’s Chair of Political Representation Mohamed Gadallah told The Caravan.
According to their own constitution, members of the PA are not permitted to institute proceedings against the University.
El-Mahdy, for example, resigned because she chose to engage in the court case, but could not due to her membership in the PA.
But PA member Waleed Hassan believes that the resignations won’t resolve much.
“It was through negotiation with the administration that the PA is now included within the University Budget Committee’s meetings,” he said.
The Emergency Grant was only introduced, as a short-term solution, through the involvement of the PA in the negotiation process, he added.
Nevertheless, many parents were not convinced and demanded a long-term solution instead.
It is for these reasons that many parents refused to participate in the election of new PA leadership.
Some took to the Facebook page “AUC Parents Movement” to express their concern, calling the current PA structure ineffective.
