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UNIVERSITY FEES

USJ students demonstrate against fresh dollar fee hike

USJ students demonstrate against fresh dollar fee hike

The entrance to the USJ campus, Huvelin Steet, on the occasion of student elections. (Credit: Marc Fayad)

BEIRUT – Saint Joseph University of Beirut students held a sit-in at the university’s Rectorate in Sodeco to protest the university demanding students pay an additional $250 in “fresh dollars” for their second semester’s tuition for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Here’s what we know:

    • The university’s secular club had called for the protest.

    • In videos shared on social media, an administrator at the university can be seen asking a student protesting to form a delegation of “three or four students” for negotiations. The student claimed that previous attempts to do so had failed and that the students’ wishes had been misrepresented in a communication from the university administration.

    • Another student, speaking on behalf of the protesters, said that the demonstrators are “not happy to be here when instead they should be studying and working to help their parents.” The student added that the protest was to “express [their] refusal of the added fee and to get the decision repealed.”

    • The university’s rector had published a letter last Wednesday mandating students pay the supplementary fee while telling students facing “real difficulties” in paying to contact the university’s social services.

    • Students expressed their indignation following the letter’s publication amid the country’s economic crisis marked by currency hyperinflation and the loss of purchasing power.

    • Reports of riot police deployment at the protest circulated on social media.

BEIRUT – Saint Joseph University of Beirut students held a sit-in at the university’s Rectorate in Sodeco to protest the university demanding students pay an additional $250 in “fresh dollars” for their second semester’s tuition for the 2021-2022 academic year.Here’s what we know:    • The university’s secular club had called for the protest.     • In videos...