EGYPT: Third Square material goods spirit endures

I live in Cairo, in September last year for a few months, and then, prior to the arrival of the revolution oppression permeated every aspect of life. Police violence, vote-rigging, media censorship and rampant corruption: Most people are familiar with the characteristics of a dictatorial regime and the unjust. However, the reality is much more sinister.

Cairo oppression deeply infiltrated society, and severely affected the lives of every individual is a part of life I observed that the Egyptians must learn to live with.

Cairo universities active and animated Although many of my friends, they'll both inside and outside the university were aware of the lack of freedom in society, and how the two are intrinsically linked.

A fresh graduate, who said the conversation I remember a depressing ". Real change is not possible until the universities [former President Hosni] Mubarak and his whole family expected to disappear right now?".

After the fall of Mubarak turned to the only nationwide strikes and protests will be the start of a sequence. After the revolution, lawyers, workers, teachers and journalists has launched his own battle, and voice their grievances against the system began to change in the call. They agree that their goal is the complete uprooting of the old regime in order to protect the spirit of the revolution.

Universities are no exception.

Students in many universities of political activity reflects the level of political freedom in a country enjoys. University, a champion of ideas to expand and develop in the minds of the young, political dissent is the ideal brewing.

A side-by-side tolerant of criticism that the government is going to have to adapt to diverse student groups and political movements universities. So it unsurprising that endangers the credibility of a dictatorship that political activity is a tough clamp-down to the universities.

Cairo University, student elections held at the end of March, the participants of the huge increase in the demand for change proved overwhelming. Before the revolution, a 'good name' with the students were only allowed to run. Nadia About Shady, by a student in the faculty of political science, this statement was vague promise of a check on the student's political affiliation.

In 2006, 520 men and women of the Muslim Brotherhood candidates were struck off the electoral lists starting in Helmand University, 28 students were arrested at their college in a room below the controversy.

In 2008, two students from the same university Resistance group filed a legal complaint against the police, physical attacks, attacks by means of which the National Democratic Party (NDP) criticized the group were held in the conference believing.

On April 21, I visited the University of Cairo to meet friends. I read that there were campus protests and strikes following the revolution, but was surprised to see a large group gathered around the faculty of mass communication I have.

I heard the familiar words: "Leave, leave the whip until the fall of the regime!". These words are chanted in Third Square are still in Yemen, Syria and Libya singing. Why at the university, they were singing the same words, two months after the ousting of Mubarak?

Sammy Abdel Aziz, a member of the faculty and prominent ex-dean of the NDP, Mubarak criticized the uprising in its early stages and in relation to 'inspirational leadership' was as Churchill and Gandhi. The media in an attempt to influence the views of anti-revolution angered students, to the extent that they staged a massive sit-ins and protests to demand his resignation.

However, two months later, he remained firmly in its place. Several attempts to students, including promises of reform to try to appease, but to no avail. Third-class faculty and students, who I know only as Etnas, said: "It is an amazing teacher, He in fact an old one, but we can not tolerate a system that allowed students and then read about how badly you were treated .. revolution? This is the proof that all the elements of the old regime must go. "

She was an incident on March 26, when the military police stormed into the faculty, cattle prods and stun-gun students dissolved, and referring to the teachers and students to protest min.

This happened immediately after a law was passed to ban demonstrations, 'hindered the work process' since then.

These protests do not appear out of a vacuum. Demands the immediate resignation of the university despite the figures, I have seen that there is a deep yearning for a fundamental change in education in Egypt.

Zed Huda, an Arabic teacher and a masters degree from the University of Cairo, is believed to be a revolution in the education system: ".. Each of the Minister of Education recognizes what his predecessor has established that the actual development and the educational process remains unstable to remove"

Education in particular suffered during the Mubarak regime. "People can not believe that they can not stand up for themselves. Mubarak wants his people to be stupid as possible so that he and his regime were unopposed," he continued.

Concrete plans and strategies for education reform will come later, but the student protest, this can not be achieved without the complete demolition of the old system.

Read one of the slogans of the media in front of the faculty, 'a symbol of the corruption of the faculty and the university president and the trial in Egypt to demand the resignation of Dean of the Faculty. "

After all, these protests are not just about the university. Egypt and the protection of the revolution that shook the whole country. Continues the spirit of Third Square campus, and students are required to have specific.

* Divine Levy Middle East studies in the third year of his degree at Cambridge University of Hong Kong, now a student in Cairo.