Universities sign pact to stop student brawls
JAKARTA (JP): Police and military officers witnessed the managements of two privately-owned universities sign a pact yesterday to put an end to brawls like that involving their students on Wednesday.
One item of the agreement, signed by Yeldy Kandou from the Maritime Academy of Indonesia (AMI) and Adrianus Siregar from the Christian University of Indonesia (UKI), not Catholic University of Indonesia as reported yesterday, stipulates that the management boards of both universities will punish all students who participated in the fight.
Both sides agreed to temporarily suspend the academic activities at the schools for three days. The educational activities will resume on Monday.
Under the agreement, the management of the AMI maritime academy, whose students were believed to have sparked the incident, agreed to replace the property of the UKI Christian university, which was damaged in the incident.
The academy agreed to repair the damaged signboards of UKI's schools of law and political science and to finance the replacement of all objects vandalized during the attack.
The Wednesday afternoon brawl at the UKI campus at Jl. Diponegoro 82-86 in Central Jakarta was allegedly initiated by a group of AMI students, who attacked UKI students and damaged university property.
The attack left at least eight students injured and 31 parked vehicles, the law school building and a number of computers damaged.
"Both sides will do a financial assessment of the damaged items," the agreement said.
No clashes
The agreement signed yesterday requires both parties to take action to control their student bodies in order to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Among the witnesses of the pact signing were the chiefs of the North Jakarta and South Jakarta police precincts, the commanders of the military posts in those mayoralties and City Police spokesman Lt. Col. Bambang Haryoko.
Wednesday's brawl lasted well over two hours. It took the arrival of anti-riot police and military personnel to restore peace.
The police briefly detained some of the students to check identification, but nobody was arrested.
City Police Chief Maj. Gen. Mochammad Hindarto said the cause of the attack "is just narrow-minded friendship".
Based on preliminary investigations, police found that the AMI students decided to attack the other university to take revenge for a friend, who was stabbed by someone in front of the UKI campus two days earlier, Hindarto said after attending the 44th anniversary of the National Marine and Air Police Force.
"The AMI students were totally in error because the suspect was not a UKI student," he explained. "And taking a revenge is not part of our culture."
In line with the agreement, dozens of police and military personnel have been deployed to both campuses to safeguard the situation for the time being.
"We have to anticipate the possibility of another attack from either side," Hindarto said. (bsr)