On 21 November, the government gave the police the green light to enter Egypt's university campuses without a previous request if they saw major threats developing against people or buildings. The results have been catastrophic. “I personally saw the gates closed and the police shooting pellet bullets from between the bars,” said Mahmoud Hamed, president of the Faculty of Science student union at Cairo University. Hamed said that the students had been demonstrating on 28 November outside the university campus when police confronted them with tear gas. The students had then run onto the campus and closed the university gates. When engineering students saw the action outside, they had started chanting inside the campus. The police had shot at them with tear gas and birdshot, and this had killed student Mohamed Reda, Hamed said. In reaction to the police intervention, the Cairo University president's office and student union issued statements in which they criticised the police action that had led to the death of Reda and the injuring of other students and university personnel. More statements followed from the student union office, announcing the withdrawal of Hisham Ashraf, president of Cairo University's student union, from the 50-member constituent assembly tasked with drawing up a new constitution. The statement criticised the regime and its actions and demanded the removal of minister of higher education Hossam Eissa and the opening of an immediate investigation into police actions. The police have been accused of going beyond reasonable limits and of tracking students on the campus, read the Cairo University official statement. The statement also demanded the immediate release of detained students. It said that the University would collect evidence of attacks on students and would set up a special investigative committee. It assigned a legal team to follow up the investigations and make representations to the authorities. Meanwhile, other colleges and universities across the country have been affected by strikes or protests. Cairo University announced three days of mourning as a result of Reda's death, and the student union froze all its activities. “If they can't protect us while we are studying, why should we go? We will not sacrifice our lives,” Hamed said. Assistant professor Hani Al-Husseini of the Faculty of Science at Cairo University and a member of the 9 March Movement for the Independence of Egyptian Universities, said that the Cairo University demonstrations had been peaceful despite some clashes among the students. “The police were installed in the universities in 1954 and they have now outstayed their welcome,” Al-Husseini said. “In 1971, the late president Anwar Al-Sadat abolished the police presence. But in 1981 the police were reintroduced, though this decision was annulled by the courts in 2010.” The presence of the security forces on university campuses is considered by many to be against the universities' independence and is perceived as a form of state monitoring and the suppression of political activities. Even with the current decree, Al-Husseini said that the police do not have the right to enter university campuses, adding that this decision, taken by the cabinet of Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi, would see casualties on campuses. “The law should be an alternative to the police. The universities have their own internal security, and this should be allowed to function,” he said. Mohamed Abdel-Salam, a researcher at the Association for the Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), said that the police presence on the campuses went against international criteria of freedom and was a violation of the universities' independence. Al-Husseini said that university internal regulations may also not be clear to all students, who may not know, for example, that the possession of fireworks inside a university is not legal. The regulations should be published, he said, so that students would know what was permitted and what wasn't. “This will restore order and calm inside the universities,” he said. Ahmed Said, official spokes person of the Faculty of Engineering at Al-Azhar University, who has been assigned to observe violations and speak on the behalf of students, said that there had been many violations in Egyptian universities, including dismissing students without stating the reasons or transferring students to arbitrary disciplinary councils for trivial reasons. Said said that students faced charges if they were caught demonstrating outside the universities, and that therefore they had chosen to demonstrate on the campuses. On 20 November, Said said, the police had attacked the students at Al-Azhar University. Some had hidden in the University mosque, which was attacked and students were dragged and beaten. “They used tear gas and pellets randomly,” Said recalled. In the affray, student Abdel-Ghani Hamouda had been killed. According to Al-Azhar University media spokesperson Ahmed Zarie, the killing of the student was currently under investigation. Magdi Abbas, director of security at Al-Azhar, told Al-Ahram Weekly that if any building or persons were attacked, the university's security forces would ask the police to intervene since they did not have the capacity to handle the situation themselves. However, Yasser Manaa, deputy director of Cairo University security, said that police intervention could escalate the problems. “We are capable of keeping the university secure,” he said. According to Moez Zakaria, president of the student union at the Faculty of Commerce at Cairo University, “the only disorder that happened at the university was the attacking of the administrative building that occurred on 30 October.” He accused Al-Azhar University of staging scenes of students storming buildings, breaking windows, and throwing out documents. However, Zarie denied all accusations. According to Fatma Ragab, secretary of the cultural and political higher committee at the Cairo University students union and a member of the legal committee formed by Gaber Nassar, the university president, to follow up investigations, the students had demonstrated around the university on 1 December against the killing of Reda. They had stood by the university clock, chanting slogans demanding the freeing of the detained students and criticising Hossam Eissa, the minister of higher education, and the Ministry of Interior. However they had not joined the pro-Morsi “students against the coup” standing by the university dome. Ragab said that the latter had moved to Al-Nahda Square in front of the university, and then the non-politicised students had decided to leave. A police car had been burnt in Al-Nahda Square, and the “students against the coup” group had moved to Tahrir Square, where they were dispersed by the security forces. Abdel-Salam said that the decision to mobilise the police had been a political one intended to repress the freedom of expression. “Even if they are Brotherhood supporters or fulul [remnants of the regime of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak] they should not be oppressed,” he said. Egypt's students debate Before the Cairo University clashes on 23 November, students unions from across the country held a press conference at Cairo University rejecting police violations and attacks inside Egyptian universities. Whether the group organising the conference truly represented the union, however, remains in question. Mustafa Mounir, president of Mansoura University students union who was answering questions during the conference, said that the unions had not rejected the decision to involve the police in ensuring security entirely, despite a motion demanding this. The conference was conducted with the agreement of the student union presidents of the universities of Aswan, South Valley, Sohag, Assiut, Minya, Beni Sweif, Fayoum, Damanhour, Mansoura, Zagazig, Damietta, Suez, Al-Azhar, and the higher institutes, all of which had taken part. According to a report on the 2013 students union elections, the Cairo union's president is independent, while Muslim Brotherhood students are in the vice president's seat and make up the majority of the executive office, indicating that independent students are in the minority in the union. Mohamed Abdel-Salam said that various groups believed that they were representing the union, adding that the civil current and Brotherhood members among the students were nevertheless divided about whether the 30 June Revolution had been a coup. Abdel-Salam said that the authorities, instead of dismissing students, should give them warnings or freeze their memberships of the unions. This would be a more constructive way of handling dissent, he said.
