University heads demand police on campus

University deans intensified their calls for heightened security on campus as the annual semester break was extended for security reasons. The demands came in the wake of Wednesday’s bombings at Cairo University, which killed a police officer. 

The Cairo University Council has reportedly unanimously agreed to adopt a comprehensive security strategy that would immediately bring the police back on campus. They would be authorized to take whatever measures they deem necessary to secure the university, with full support from the administration, according to the privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (AMAY).

The university said in a statement that it came to the decision after a terrorist incident that represented a threat to the university as a whole, referring to Wednesday's bombing.

Cairo University’s dean of the Faculty of Law, Mahmoud Kobish, demanded the return of university security and supported the return of police forces. 

“The Brotherhood is used to killing people and blaming it on the police, and this is what stops the police from intervening,” Kobish told the privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (AMAY).

Police do not need the approval of the university administration to enter campus, he claimed, “because its main role is to protect state facilities.”

But the Interior Ministry said its personnel would not set foot on campus without a written request from the university’s president, according to the Ashraf Abdallah, the ministry’s assistant minister for central security, as reported in AMAY.

Ashraf Abdallah highlighted the example of Al-Azhar University in a phone interview with the “Voice of the People” talk show in Thursday. That university’s president asked the Interior Ministry for permanent police presence on campus, and the ministry responded immediately, according to Abdallah.

Amidst the absence of university guards, Abdallah said, campuses have become a haven for crime and violence.

Ashraf al-Shehhy, head of the University of Zagazig, also called for the return of university security, as well as a structure that could protect the university, its facilities and students without interfering with other administrative procedures.

That sort of interference had previously been the source of resentment towards university security, Shehhy said.

The old system of university guards is not that different from the current administrative security system, Shehhy continued in a statement to the press on Thursday, except that the university guards were armed.

“I refuse this sensitivity in dealing with the idea of ​​university guards,” he argued, saying that the nation can no longer bear what is happening in universities.

There has to be a police presence in universities, Shehhy urged, especially on the most volatile campuses.

He also called for a ban on demonstrations on campus, saying the educational process must take precedence over the right to protest.

Meanwhile, staff at Al-Azhar’s Engineering College for Girls began collecting signatures to support the continued presence of police on campus “in order to achieve stability and to prevent riots,” AMAY reported.

The staff called for an intensified police presence, pointing to the failure of the university to take measures such as installing iron gates to prevent the storming of university buildings during student demonstrations.