CAIRO - Security in student dormitories since the recent revolution has deteriorated to the same extent as security in the Egyptian street. Female students at Cairo, Ain Shams and Al-Azhar universities are living in a state of panic and fear, while the food they're served and the way they're treated are just as bad as before the revolution. Last week, Helwan University, another public university in southern Cairo, had to suspend classes after its female dormitories were attacked by suspected thugs. Prior to January 25, the woman in charge of one of the female dormitories at Cairo University was sympathetic to the former regime. She abused her authority in many ways. She was in the habit of forcing many students to leave the dorm late at night and return to their home governorates, describing them as thugs who threatened the security in the dormitory. The woman, related to one of Mubarak's ministers, denied any wrongdoing, blaming everything on the supervisors. According to one of the supervisors in the dormitory, the people who worked in the hostel housing the dormitories held a protest before the revolution, demanding they be paid overtime, because they had to work from 10am till the next morning. They also complained of favouritism. One female student says that all the students were unhappy with the above-mentioned chairwoman, who cut the water and electricity to their dorm at the start of the second term of the academic year and even removed the security guards on duty at the gates to the hostel, replacing them with unarmed civilians. Another student complains of the bad food and the fact that the deposit they have to pay at the beginning of the year is never returned to them at the end of the year. “Our dorm is very near the Tharwat Bridge, making us an easy target for thugs,“ she adds. Sodfa Mohamed el-Sayyed, an engineering undergraduate at Al-Azhar University, told Radio and TV magazine that, since returning for the new university term, they've been suffering from the absence of security. “The university guards have disappeared and we're terrified of what the thugs might do. The university administration has promised to provide us with guards from a private security company, but nothing's happened,” she said. Manal Mahmoud and Faten Moustafa, from Luxor and Aswan respectively, are studying in the Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University. They complain of the bad food, while Faten even has to share her bed with one of her friends, another girl studying at the university, although every student pays for her own bed in the dorm. Marwa Osama, in her fourth year in the Faculty of Pharmacology, calls for better security. “If I hear a strange voice at night, I immediately pull out the knife from under my pillow,” she says. “Another problem is that, if you're late for dinner because of your lectures, you have to go hungry. We also need a clinic and an ambulance. One of my fellow students had a heart attack and the administration refused to help her because it was late at night. “The only medicine available is aspirin. We live on the fifth floor and we don't even have a bathroom. We have to walk all the way down to the ground floor to use the bathroom there.”
