EGYPT: The Their four-sided figure strength lingers on university grounds

I live in Cairo, arrived a few months before the revolution that began in September last year, and then see how repression pervades every aspect of life. Most people are familiar with the characteristics of an unfair and dictatorial regime: the police brutality, vote-rigging, media censorship and widespread corruption. But the reality is much more sinister.

Cairo repression deeply infiltrated society and I observed how deeply it affects the lives of every individual, busy learned an integral part of the lives of Egyptians to live.

Although many of my friends in Cairo's universities active and animated, they were acutely aware of their lack of freedom within the university and outside in the community, and how the two intrinsically linked.

I remember a conversation with a depressed fresh graduate, who said: ". Real change can not be made in universities to [former President Bosnia] Mubarak and his family disappeared hope not now?".

The fall of Mubarak seems to be only the beginning of a series of nationwide strikes and be protests. After the revolution, lawyers, workers, teachers and journalists start their own battles to voice their grievances against the system and to call for a change. They are unanimous: their goal is the complete uprooting of the old regime to protect the spirit of the revolution.

Universities are no exception.

The nature of student political activity in universities often reflects the degree of political freedom a country enjoys. The university, a hotbed for the development of expanding minds and ideas champion, is the ideal brewing ground for a political disagreement.

A government tolerant criticism usually side-by-side with universities that have a diverse student body to accommodate political groups and movements. It is therefore not surprising that any political activity that the credibility of a dictatorial regime danger leads to a hard clamp down on universities.

Cairo University, the huge increase of the participants held in the student elections at the end of March demonstrated the overwhelming demand for radical change. Before the revolution, only students with a 'good reputation' allowed to run. According to Nadia Abou Shady, a student in the faculty of political science, this vague statement was actually a check on political affiliation of the student.

In 2006, the names of 520 male and female nominees of the Muslim Brotherhood scrapped the initial election lists Helena University and 28 students were arrested in their university dormitories after the controversy.

In 2008, two students of the Resistance group in the same university filed a legal complaint against police officers for physical assault, believes the attacks were the result of a conference held by the group that the National Democratic Party (NDP) criticized.

On 21 April I Cairo University to meet friends. I had read that protests and strikes on campus after the revolution, but I was surprised to see a large group around the faculty of mass communication.

I heard the familiar words: "Let, let Strike to the fall of the regime!". These words are chanted in Their Square, and they are still sung in Yemen, Syria and Libya. Why are the very words chanted at the university, two months after the ousting of Mubarak?

Sammy Abdel Aziz, the dean of the faculty and a prominent former member of the NDP, criticized the uprising in its early stages and compared Mubarak's an inspirational leadership to that of Churchill and Gandhi. His attempt to influence the media to view anti-revolution angry students, to the extent that they staged massive sit-ins and protests for a question: his resignation.

But two months later, he remains firm in its position. Several attempts were made to students, including promises of reforms to appease, but to no avail. A third-year student in the faculty, I know just as Etnas, said: "He is in fact a wonderful professor But we can not allow anyone who supported the old regime You read about how bad students even after treated. . the revolution? This is proof that all the elements of the old regime must go. "

She referred to an incident on March 26, when the military police stormed the faculty, students dissolution cattle prods and with stun guns, injuring protesting students and professors.

This happened immediately after a law was passed that banned demonstrations, as they hinder work process ".

This protest did not appear out of a vacuum. Although the demands are the immediate resignation of the university figures, I saw that there is a deep yearning for a fundamental change in education in Egypt.

Huda Sedan, an Arabic teacher and a masters graduate of Cairo University, believes the education system needs its own revolution: ".. Every education minister claims to remove implemented its predecessor For this reason the educational process remains unstable without real development "

Education has suffered in particular during the Mubarak regime. "When people can not do, they can not stand up for themselves. Mubarak wanted his people to be as stupid as possible so that he and his regime were unopposed," she said.

Concrete plans and strategies to reform education will come later, but the students argued, it can not be achieved without the complete uprooting of the old system.

A slogan in front of the faculty of mass communication read: "The students of the faculty demanding the trial of all the symbols of corruption in Egypt and the resignation of the chairman of the university and the dean of the faculty."

Eventually, the protests are not just about the university. It is about Egypt and the protection of the revolution that shook the country. The Their Square spirit lingers on campuses, and students are determined to stop it.

* Dvina Levy, a student from Hong Kong, now in Cairo for the third year of her Cambridge University degree in Middle East studies-.