University heads postpone ultimatum to end student strike
Posted on Haaretz
By Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz Correspondent

May 5 2007

The Committee of University Heads (CUH) announced Friday that classes in universities state-wide would resume on Monday, with or without the striking students, and not on Sunday, as they had threatened earlier.

The CUH decided to postpone the forced resumption of studies following a request submitted by the heads of the student unions in the different universities. The students requested the delay in order to complete Sunday the ongoing negotiations with the Prime Minister's Office.

The threats made by the university heads' drew the criticism of university junior academic staff organizations and college lecturers Friday.

Students have been striking since April 10 to protest the Shochat Committee, which is deliberating higher education reforms including a tuition hike, as well as to call for the reversal of roughly NIS 1 billion in higher education budget cuts and a decrease in tuition.

The organizations, which represent teaching assistants and outside lecturers, added that they intend to help the striking students shut down the campuses and disrupt the classes, as well as make up the material missed as a result of the strike.

Ehud Karni, a member of the junior academic staff organizations' coordinating forum, said that the junior academic staffs of all the universities have decided to assist the students in all legal activities they choose to undertake in order to prevent the resumption of classes.

"Instead of backing the workers and the students, we are again faced with managements that lack a moral backbone that serve as a mouthpiece for the Shochat Committee and the treasury," said Eli Leher, deputy chairman of the coordinating forum. "The university heads are continuing a policy that will turn them into economic factories, which employ an increasingly large portion of their staff as 'outside lecturers' who have no social or academic rights, and are fired each summer without any compensation."

Dr. Leah Mor, head of the national council of public college lecturers told Haaretz Friday "the strike is just. Their goal is not only to lower tuition fees, but also the return of funding into the system, and the state of higher learning in general. In this we support them." Mor added that the lecturers would also aid the students in making up material and completing the current semester.

Tel Aviv University's senior academic staff organization also criticized the CUH decision Thursday, which the organization's chairman, Professor Ben-Zion Munitz, called "an obvious attempt to break the strike with threats."

On Thursday evening, Munitz sent the entire faculty an email, calling on them to "return each and every hour of instruction, and to do all that is necessary in order to allow students to meet their obligations. Thus they will not be able to prevent the students from succeeding."

There were no similar calls at other universities.

Gov't to striking students: Settlement offer will not be renegotiated
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Education Minister Yuli Tamir informed the striking university students Thursday that the government will not renegotiate the settlement it offered students last weekend. Meanwhile, the faculty is demanding that the students terminate the strike.

In its offer, the government proposed to keep tuitions at the current rate of NIS 8,600 for the students already enrolled at universities until their graduation, and for new students who will enroll in 2008. However, starting 2009, new students will be subject to the projected increase in tuition that the Shochat Committee for reform in the higher education system is expected to announce.

The government also offered to restore NIS 1 billion which was cut from the higher education budget in recent years. However, the students' organizations rejected the settlement offer.

According to National Students Union Chairman Itai Barda, the union rejected the proposal not only because it does not address the students' demand for tuition to be decreased, but also because it mandates the full implementation of the Shochat Committee's proposed reform, which Barda says "will lead to the privatization of the higher education system and will harm underprivileged students."

Tamir expressed her sorrow that the students rejected the offer, saying that "ultimately, it is important that they join discussions. The students will miss out if the process ends without them being a part of it."

The Committee of University Heads demanded on Thursday that students cease their strike and return to classes on Sunday. The faculty threatened to revoke the current semester's academic credits from students who refuse to attend classes.

The universities instructed their lecturers to teach on Sunday even if only one student shows up. "The party is over," Professor Moshe Kaveh, chairman of the Committee of University Heads, said Thursday. "The students can demonstrate wherever they please, but right now we want to salvage what is left of this semester." According to Kaveh, the continuation of the strike would cause "irreversible damage."

The leaders of the student strike responded by stating that the students will continue striking and, if need be, block the entrances to university campuses.

The committee of university heads announced Thursday that the current university academic semester will be extended by two weeks as a result of the student strike. The university heads called on all students to return to classes.

Students and police clashed Wednesday as a protest at the Tel Aviv University campus overflowed into the streets and neighboring Ayalon Highway, with mixed reports of excessive force and violence on the part of riot police.