Scores of teaching assistants at Cairo's Ain Shams University staged a silent vigil on Wednesday to protest a university policy forbidding 400 of their colleagues from delivering lectures, effectively confining them to administrative work. Protestors said they had sent complaints to President Hosni Mubarak, Mubarak's influential son, Gamal, and presidential chief-of-staff Zakaria Azmy. "Articles 155 and 156 of the university bylaws stipulate that any assistant that fails to obtain a Master's Degree after five years should only be assigned administrative work," said Teaching Assistant Ahmed Abdel Rahman. He added, however, that faculty committees had recently agreed to extend the five-year deadline. "How can the resolution apply to assistants currently working on their degrees abroad?" Abdel Rahman asked. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
