Rift ruining Satya Wacana's future

Rift ruining Satya Wacana's future

By Ariel Heryanto

SALATIGA, Central Java (JP): Indonesia has never seen
anything like this before. And the full story has yet to be
written.

Thousands of students and faculty members are on a strike that
has now lasted half a year. They are protesting against the
leadership of a university.

This civil crisis is taking place at Satya Wacana Christian
University in this small and ancient town. The events that
motivated the strike and the action itself have paralyzed the
whole system of the university. And yet that is only a small part
of the story.

The conflict is mostly internal in nature. It would,
therefore, be unfair to overlook all of the details of the events
and make sweeping interpretations. Nonetheless, the strike is
reflective of what is happening to Indonesian society, and
perhaps to Southeast Asia in the 1990s.

This decade is ushering in the growth and spread of an
educated urban middle class. Not only has the size of the middle
class increased tremendously, a sense of collective identity has
emerged, albeit it is far from being monolithic, clear-cut, or
solid.

The rift at Satya Wacana is a complex one, and it is not
easy to pinpoint where it all actually started. But at least one
aspect is fairly clear. The one major event triggering the public
split and the strike was the arbitrary dismissal of Dr. Arief
Budiman, a senior lecturer for the university's postgraduate
program. That was one year ago today.

The dismissal provoked anger on a massive scale among the
academic community at Satya Wacana and far beyond. What enraged
them was not the dismissal itself, but the fact that is was a
gross violation of proper procedures. The dismissal itself was
only part of a series of events whose origin dated back as far as
10 years ago. The conflict had intensified steadily from June
1993 when the university elected a new rector.

The dismissal had no precedence. This was the first time
Satya Wacana had dismissed an employee dishonorably. To make
matters worse, the decision was made without any consultation
with the direct superior of the employee, as stipulated in the
university statutes. The university's board made no specific
allegations concerning Budiman's wrongdoings. It made only a
brief reference to a statement he made in the media. The media
reported that Budiman thought the board regarded him as hostile
to members of the University's board and administration. Budiman
was given neither the chance to present a defense, nor any sort
of compensation. He simply lost all his earnings and positions
less than a week from the moment he was given the letter of
dismissal.

Observers generally view the dismissal as revenge for
Budiman's involvement in the widespread university opposition
against the board's appointment of Dr. John Ihalauw as the new
rector in 1993. The board apparently overlooked the fact that
Budiman did not lead the opposition as post-dismissal protests
attested.

The crux of the matter was that, unlike many of his
colleagues, Budiman had been a public figure since the 1960s. And
he has long been a darling of the media.

According to those opposing the appointment, Ihalauw lost in
the election to Dr. Liek Wilardjo. On the other side, the board
claimed to have veto power and the right to suggest alternative
candidates to the minister of education and culture for final
approval. In any case, Ihalauw was appointed in a ceremony
boycotted by most of the universities deans and the people
chairing service units within the university. Since then no
university-level assembly (University Senate) has taken place due
to lack of a quorum, a result of the same boycott.

The conflict has since snowballed into the crisis it is
today. The rector has terminated most of the university's deans
and heads of departments in response to the insistent opposition
to his holding the post of rector even after Budiman's dismissal,
when they filed a motion of no confidence in the rector. Those
who cosigned the motion made up 75 percent of the University
Senate members from teaching units, 64 percent of all active
faculty members, and over 80 percent of the university's Ph.D.
holders.

About 70 faculty members have received no salaries since
August 1995. Instead, each of them has received letters
threatening them with dismissal. Over the past 12 months, massive
demonstrations have become a regular sight on the campus in
response to the dismissal. The last major demonstration occurred
in September, when more than 1,000 students attacked the
university's main administration building. Security officers
broke up the protest, arresting 19 students, and handing three of
them over to the local prosecutor's office for possible trial in
the near future.

Last July, the university suffered a defeat in a court case
over Budiman's dismissal. Now they are facing no less serious
legal charges from hundreds of parents of students for the
university's failure to provide education to their children.
Overseas institutions decline to continue cooperation and support
of Satya Wacana under the current leadership.

The Ministry of Education and Culture has opted to wash its
hands off the affair. The minister even refused the desperate
plea of students and faculty members to act as a mediator.

One of the many remarkable things about the whole affair is
the vigor and perseverance of those opposing the university
leadership. This has involved hundreds of lecturers and thousands
of students over an uninterrupted period of two years. At the
risk of losing secure jobs, promotion and much sought after
university degrees, these people have fought fiercely for
something as abstract as "ethical principles, justice, and due
procedures".

This implies exhaustive meetings over the whole period of two-
and-a-half years. The struggle took place in many fronts and
forms: religious services, negotiation, intimidation through
anonymous pamphlets, telephone calls, and letters, litigation in
courts, interrogation by the police and military officers,
interviews with the media and press conferences, hunger strikes
and repeated physical violence.

It is worth emphasizing, nearly all of these people had no
prior experience, nor interest, in political activities.
Significantly they called themselves the Pro-Democracy Group, in
a time when certain officers within the military elite declared
"democracy" to be politically incorrect, along with "human
rights, environment, or openness".

In the 1980s Satya Wacana ranked as one of the top tertiary
institutions in the nation. Its strength was derived from
administrative viability, as well as a reputation of outstanding
individual professors in the humanities and social sciences. The
notable writer Goenawan Mohamad suggested that individuals like
Arief Budiman, George Junus Aditjondro, Th. Sumartana, Liek
Wilardjo, or Nico L.Kana constituted unparalleled prestige and
resources for the university.

Incidentally, all of these individuals belong to the Pro-
democracy Group.

Critical statements from these individuals on separate
occasions on sensitive issues of political significance often
made the university's leadership nervous.

Satya Wacana was the first private university to obtain the
government's approval to open a postgraduate program in
development studies. The program quickly attracted many foreign
scholars and academic institutions to establish joint projects.
This program was also one of the first and the worst victims of
the rector's attack. The fact that many people and important
institutions considered the university the institutional bastion
of the opposition forces undermined the rector's position.

Satya Wacana's dramatic growth would have been unimaginable
without taking into account the sustained economic growth in the
country, or the whole of Southeast Asia, for more than two
decades. Neither can the political volatility within the
university be separated from the wave of contemporary
democratization in the society at large. Both the university's
growth and its political consequences appeared to be going too
far and too fast for the old university bureaucracy to handle.

Now, impatient with the seemingly never-ending conflict,
many of the university's best lecturers have fled and have taken
jobs elsewhere. Others will follow suit, unless the conflict can
be resolved substantially and soon. That seems unlikely.

One wonders what these contemporary pro-democracy
professionals will find in their new working atmospheres. Also it
seems appropriate to ask just how unique the volatile situation
at Satya Wacana really is, or whether it has correlations to the
atmosphere existing in the nation's major cities.

The writer was, until recently, a lecturer for the post-
graduate program at the Satya Wacana Christian University.

Window A: The rift at Satya Wacana is a complex one, and it is not
easy to pinpoint where it starts.

Window B: Impatient with the seemingly never-ending conflict,
many of the university best lecturers have fled and worked
elsewhere.