Violent week-long protest shuts Medan Institute of Technology

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan, North Sumatra

Unruly demonstrations by students demanding the resignation of a department head meant teaching activities at the Medan Institute of Technology (ITM) were officially halted for four days starting on Thursday.

Students have been staging protests for almost a week on their campus on Jl. Gedung Arca, Medan, North Sumatra, demanding the resignation of mechanical engineering department head Ilmi Abdullah.

The protesters blamed Ilmi for the lowering of the accreditation grade of their private-run institute from a B to C.

The protests turned unruly, with students setting fire to desks, chairs, breaking windows and briefly taking the institute's deputy rector Zul Asri and senate secretary Hamzah Lubis hostage.

ITM rector Zulkifli Mukhtar said the decision to send home the students for a four-day holiday was aimed at cooling down the situation on the campus.

The students must return to the campus on Monday and those who remained "disobedient" and continued to resort to vandalism and violence would be expelled from the institute or face other academic sanctions, he said.

"Hopefully, peace will soon return on Monday. Give us time to evaluate this problem," Zulkifli said.

The rector said campus administrators had reported the incident to police to investigate.

Responding to the protesters' demand for the university to dismiss Ilmi, Zulkifli said it was illogical and baseless.

"The demand is excessive. A drop in a school's rate of accreditation doesn't mean that its department head should be removed. Ilmi Abdullah has been teaching here for only a year. If such a request this so hastily granted, I could be the next target," he said.

The rector argued the move to lower the accreditation rate from B to C had been approved by the higher education directorate of the national education ministry in Jakarta.

Ilmi said the student demand for him to resign was unreasonable.

"At the time, when a team from the higher education directorate was here for evaluations, I had only served four months as the head of the mechanical engineering department. Why am I blamed for the drop in the grade? It's not right," he said.

No one was to blame, he said. A review would take place in order to improve the quality of education in the school.

Student protester Hendra said the students became unruly because university leaders had failed to respond to their demands.

Violent protests could have been avoided if the rector or other campus leaders had quickly explained what was behind the decision to drop the school's accreditation rate, he said.

"There were certainly reasons for (the students) being disorderly. And the reasons were simple -- they had not been listened to seriously," Hendra told The Jakarta Post.

Since the mechanical engineering department was headed by Ilmi, students had been burdened with lots of regulations, he said.

It was also hard to find Ilmi on campus, Hendra said.