Parents demonstrate at ITB

Parents demonstrate at ITB

BANDUNG (JP): The Association of Parents of the Bandung Institute of Technology yesterday erected a huge banner on the campus supporting the college's decision to expel two students and dismiss three junior lecturers deemed responsible for the death of a freshman during an initiation period last month.

The parents joined forces with staff lecturers in putting up posters to state their support for the rector's move. Other posters also called for the abolition of initiations and of primitive attitudes on the campus.

The poster protest came a day after hundreds of poster-waving students staged a demonstration in the campus grounds to protest against the expulsion of their colleagues.

It followed the death of Zaki Tiffany Lazuardian, 18, a first year physics student, on Jan. 8 after a rigorous 12-day initiation organized by the Student's Physics Association (Himafi).

The two students expelled were executives of Himafi.

Meanwhile, the Bandung chapter of the Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) in an open letter to the ITB rector denounced the removal of the two students.

LBH maintained that if it had been established that Zaki's death was caused by Himafi's initiation then, it should be the rector himself who should have been fired.

LBH contends that the continued practice of holding initiations for first year students is unhealthy and said that these rites have often become a manifestation of pent-up frustrations by those the organizers.(17)