AMMAN — Presidents of public universities
met at a retreat at the
University of Jordan Saturday to discuss the
organization of party work among university students and their participation in
political life adopted a number of recommendations, Al-Ghad News reported.
اضافة اعلان
The retreat was held to follow up on the July 26
meeting between His Majesty King Abdullah and the heads of public universities,
during which the King urged youths at universities to assume a key role in the
political modernization process and participate in platform-based political
parties.
In a separate meeting with deans of students’
affairs at public universities on August 15,
HRH Crown Prince Hussein said that
universities are pillars of political modernization, being incubators of young
people with various political leanings.
During Saturday’s meeting, the presidents drafted a
number of recommendations, among which a call to involve students in drafting
legislation that regulates political life.
They also agreed that university administrations
must revise the way they communicate with students, to encourage their
engagement in the political process and boost their political awareness and
participation.
They underscored that the development of active
citizenship stems from the right to engage in political life.
The presidents pointed out that encouraging the
national duty to engage and participate in public affairs requires that public
institutions and the media work together to create awareness, while adopting
policies targeting the youth and making this duty part of societal culture and
public behavior.
They noted that developing responsible citizenship
requires carrying out deep reforms of educational and cultural institutions.
The presidents agreed that there is need to pinpoint
sources of concern about the practice of partisan work and to find clear
answers and solutions.
Finally, they agreed that there is need for
universities to reconsider their curricula and formulate them in a modern and
systematic way.
In his opening remarks at the meeting, the head of
the Royal Committee to Modernize of the Political System,
Samir Al-Rifai, said
that universities should not to be turned into arenas for partisan disputes,
stressing his opposition to student unions being partisan, so that educational
institutions remain neutral.
The head of the Independent Electoral Commission,
Musa Maaytah, said that the process of political modernization requires the
dissemination of a democratic culture in local communities and among the new
generations. He added that there is need for a real revolution in education
that works on modernizing curricula and rehabilitating teachers, in order to
stop indoctrinating students so that they can develop scientific critical
thinking that makes them open to the ideas and opinions of others, and helps
them realize that dialogue is the way to learn about new ideas and that facts
are not absolute, but relative.
Partisan work in universities should not be
regulated through legislation, only a “clear text that stresses students’ right
to practice partisan work”, he said.
President of Yarmouk University Islam Massad said
that the regulation organizing partisan work in universities was set without
taking the opinion of students, while President of the University of Science
and Technology Khaled Al-Salem indicated that “this experiment is nascent, and
we are concerned with its success without haste”.
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