Egyptian snow days

When the protests in Tahrir Square ended, we all thought we could breathe a sigh of relief.

At school on Sunday, we were proved wrong.

I wasn’t feeling well, I hadn’t slept enough and I couldn’t convince myself to do the one-hour commute to campus at 7 a.m.

Sorry, Mom.

It turned out I had made the right call. A group of students had decided to shut down our campus.

This past year, tuition at American University in Cairo went up 7 percent. Some students say that amounts to about 10,000 Egyptian pounds, or $1,500. To an American student, that doesn’t sound so bad.

To the Egyptian students, it’s apparently intolerable.

When the buses got to campus Sunday, they were forced to stop. A mob of students stood in the parking lot outside the front gates.

Unbeknownst to the university, they had chained the gates to the parking lot shut.
It was a demonstration against the tuition increase.

Classes were canceled.

To quote my mother, it was like an “Egyptian snow day.”

The ringleaders were suspended and all students received a stern email from the university.

Flyers were strewn around campus with the simple message, “Wait for Thursday.”
Thursday, the stage has been set for an even bigger protest.

This protest is controversial, even among students, because the protesters are some of the richest kids in the Middle East.

American University is one of the most expensive schools in the Middle East.
The kids protesting aren’t the kids on scholarships, because scholarship students don’t pay for their tuition.

My roommate is an Egyptian student here on scholarship.

“If these kids can afford 100,000 pounds a year, they can afford 110,000,” she told me. “It’s not that big a difference at that level. They can give up an iPhone for a year.”

Many international students, myself included, are inclined to agree.

On the other hand, there might be something to be admired here.
 
Think of all the tuition increases we undergo in America. One American girl in my political science class told the class Thursday that her tuition back home went up 30 percent in the past year alone.

What did kids at her school do?

They applied for more financial aid or took out loans. Nobody protested.

 Egyptian students believe if they protest unceasingly, the administration will have to cave. They hope things can be changed for the interests of the majority.

I have to admit I admire that kind of hope and determination.

Perhaps in America we’ve become complacent. Maybe we assume protesting won’t do any good.

Egyptians are still riding the wave of the revolution where they had extreme success through protests. It makes sense that if they’re not happy about something, like the tuition increases, they’d protest.

Why don’t we have that same belief in the U.S.?