Hundreds of students rally as UGM marks anniversary

Hundreds of students rally as UGM marks anniversary

Slamet Susanto, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Some 400 students from Gadjah Mada University staged a protest
during its 54th anniversary on Friday, demanding that the campus
stop using students as what they termed "commercial objects."

The protesters urged the campus to return to its original
mission as a university serving the public.

The rally, involving seven groups within the campus including
the Student Executive Board (BEM) and the Communication Forum for
UGM Students, took place while rector Sofian Efendi was
delivering a speech marking the anniversary at a celebration.

The event, held at the Graha Sabba Permana building, was
attended by hundreds of UGM leaders and guests.

The demonstrators told university leaders to consider the
current situation, in which UGM no longer serves as "the people's
campus and campus of struggle."

BEM chairman Yudi Eka Prasetya said that since becoming a
state-owned legal entity, UGM had burdened students with numerous
fees.

Citing an example, he said the Yogyakarta-based university had
applied a special admissions mechanism that offered rich students
automatic entry, provided they paid a large amount of money, he
said.

It showed that UGM's admission selection policy was already
driven by financial considerations and this had resulted in high-
cost education in the campus, Yudi added.

"After 54 years, UGM should be more mature and rooted to the
people. What is happening now is a contradiction of that," he
said.

Opposition to the commercialization of education at UGM was
similarly lodged by BEM coordinator for the engineering school
Romi Ardiansyah.

This caused students to bear a heavier financial burden for
their education while the quality of UGM education and its
facilities remained relatively unchanged, he added.

However, UGM earlier said most of its 2003/2004 new student
intake had come from low- and middle-income families,
reconfirming its identity as the people's university.

"Around 77 percent of all the new students who have registered
themselves with Gadjah Mada come from families with an average
income of Rp 1,350,000 (US$1,588) per month. They pay up to Rp 5
million in admission fees, while in some cases the fees are
waived," Tony Atyanto Dharoko, assistant to the UGM deputy
rector, said last August.

He said only some 20 percent of students paid up to Rp 15
million in admission fees, nearly 2 percent were charged Rp 25
million, and the rest paid between Rp 30 million and Rp 100
million.

The protest ended peacefully, with a tight police security
cordon preventing the protesting students from entering the Graha
Sabba complex during the anniversary celebration.