Minister and Students

Dr. Slavoljub Marjanovic, professor at the School of Electrical Engineering, one of the eleven suspended professors to whom, apart from other things, Dean Vlada Teodosic forbade to enter the building of the school, somehow undisrupted by the 'gorillas', managed to make his way into the building located on Boulevard of the Revolution. It happened last week, during the 152nd anniversary of a highly educative teaching of Civil Engineering and Geodesy: the 'inadequate' professor asked Minister Jovo Todorovic to lead him through an encirclement of security. Some people maliciously noticed that it was the first positive act that the Minister had performed for the benefit of education.

On this occasion at the School of Civil Engineering, Minister of Education, Jovo Todorovic gave an almost unbelievable statement for 'Danas' daily: "I am against all prohibitions or pressures which endanger human freedoms. Everyone should calm down, come to their senses and simply perform their duties."

DEATH LEAP: Speaking about the School of Philology at which a record number of 70 professors and associates refused to sign the work agreement, Minister of Education announced a solution which will "satisfy everybody's demands, in spirit of the law and reconciliation. We will not exert pressure on the professors, since the work agreement is neither ideological nor an act of repression."

This latest verbal 'death leap' of the minister, particularly the emphasis on the "satisfaction of everybody's demands",  awakened the hope of some people at the University, that the authorities might give up the great purge scheduled for December 15th (the latest final deadline for signing the notorious contracts). As one of the dismissed professors said: "Maybe they will stop for a while: they dismissed twenty of us, they drove anyone they wanted away from the University. But, someone still has to remain to carry on the teaching.."

The pessimists estimate that the minister just uttered another of his statements: in fact, hasn't he said in public so many times before that he does not get very involved in his own business, or more precisely - that he does not decide anything? The statements of the Minister of Education stand as proof that our oldest cultural institution is bequeathed to certain non-institutional centers of power. On the question of what he thinks about the events at the Schools of Philology, Law and Electrical Engineering, Todorovic replied, without even batting an eye “no comment” and, defending himself: " I had no opportunity to become acquainted with those events, nor was I ever invited by those schools to visit them and to offer them some help. I was not even informed about the students' demands..." The professors and students involved in the protest at these schools, claim that there exists a written documentation about correspondence with the Minister of Education and their attempts to halt the oppression conducted by the imposed deans.

TO EXCLUDE FROM TEACHING: Perhaps it is too early to be light-hearted: at the conference of the University Council in Belgrade, in December, the Minister of Education unambiguously stated: "Those who disobey the law and do not want to sign the work agreement at the University, the originator of which is the Government of Serbia, must be excluded from teaching." Shortly afterwards, a letter to the vice-chancellor with the same content followed. It also included a remark that this Minister's opinion was approved by the Serbian Government.

The remark is of importance; at the first conference of the University Council, on September 21st, Todorovic stated exactly the opposite: the law does not imply any repressive measures for those professors and associates who did not sign the contract. The minister now underlines that "all professors have right to express their opinions in a democratic fashion, but all in the interest of the school." Like the ancient Roman god, Janus, who had two faces, each turned in the opposite direction, he says: "Both those who signed and those who did not are right, they are all interceding in favor of the school." Therefore, both deans who are using legal and physical force to throw the most eminent professors to the streets, and those professors and students who are striking against it, are right; also, both deans Marojevic, Antic and Teodosic, who brought the 'gorillas' to the schools in order to keep unsuitable teachers from entering the building, and those teachers and students who have been protesting against it during the last weeks, are right. The latter insist: "This is a school, not a zoo or a concentration camp!" The minister now speaks about the solution which will "satisfy everybody's demands", and just a few weeks before, according to TANJUG, he spoke about "the flag-bearers of resistance" behind whom stand "certain political forces, i.e. the organizers of the 1996-97 protest, during the hard times of economic and political pressures on our country." The minister also said that this small "number of politically seduced individuals should not be allowed to impede the work of tens of thousands of students."

ORDER AND WORK: It is indicative that, speaking about the situation at the University in the noticed interview for 'Danas', the Minister of Education uses the notorious syntagm from the gloomy thirties: "I support order, work and discipline!" And again, he blurted out a thought: the situation is such, that I ask myself: "Would the security halt me too, since I am also a professor!?" They did not halt him, so he concludes,"... maybe because I am also the minister." Then, again, on the question about security at the School of Electrical Engineering, he replies in a totally different 'style': "I have not seen any security."

By the way, for this security, which Minister of Education, Jovo Todorovic "has never seen" and for which it has so far been paid about 135,000 dinars, a certain amount of funds came from the Ministry of Education, as some people from the ETF (the School of Electrical Engineering) claim. The minister apparently knew nothing about the decision of the Dean of ETF, Vlada Teodosic, that two students, Veljko Janjic and Stevan Koprivica are forbidden to enter the School: "I would have certainly challenged that decision. There is no written resolution on prohibition of entrance to either professors, students or journalists to the School of ETF." When the students attempted to deliver a letter of complaint to him, which they also sent to vice-chancellor of Belgrade University, Jagos Puric, and Minister of Science and Technology, Branislav Ivkovic, Minister of Education promised to welcome them on Monday, December 7th. The meeting was, however, postponed for Wednesday. Is Jovo Todorovic going to fulfill this promise, as well as the one about the solution to "satisfy everybody's demands", we shall soon find out, already on December 16th. It would be good, as the Minister of Education says in the noisy jingle on B92 Radio, "as they say, to overcome this... as they say, but not to hinder us..."

Joking aside: at the moment when the University is about to collapse, when two schools got into a general strike, when the authorities are humiliating the professors not only with their miserable salaries of 2,000 dinars, but also with legal and physical violence, representatives of the Serbian Parliament are voting enormous privileges for the state officials, whereas at the majority of schools - only a board and a chalk...