You Were Once Students Yourselves

What’s Going On?

1. There was a lot student protests today like yesterday and many days before that. They take on a number of forms: demonstrations with chants such as “Hejab and Guidance Patrol/Death to Tyranny” (trust me, it rhymes); creative posters that were placed on the walls of universities and various classrooms; songs with videos that only show feet stomping in unison; and “cloth writing” such as the one below from Sharif University. On it, students have written “death to the dictator,” “for an ordinary life” and “Women, Life, Freedom,” etc

   

2. Gearing up for the 16th of Azar, University Student Day, tomorrow, students from seven of Tehran’s university issued a joint statement. It directly references he previous generation and draws links between their “80 days of protests” and the protests of several other groups including workers and teachers: “We have not forgotten how you emptied the tables of our fathers and mothers and answered their protestations with batons. We have not forgotten how anywhere there were protests against your vicious economic policies, you attacked them with brutality. Have you forgotten the times you imprisoned workers or kidnapped and suppressed teachers for demanding their basic rights?” The statement also addresses fellow students and faculty directly asking the students to join them (in protest) and the faculty to “not leave us alone on this day. You were once students yourselves.” Students of the faculty of law at Shahid Beheshti University (one of the 7 universities in the joint statement) also left messages like these on their faculty doors that say: “The revolution is coming. We won’t forget.”

   

3. Amidst these moments of student empowerment and dangers (the arrests of writer, students, journalists continue), it was particularly heartbreaking to read about Zahra Jalilian, a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at Tehran University. On Saturday, she threw herself down several flights of stairs at the university allegedly after an argument with her advisor who had insisted the name of a second author be included in an article that had been accepted for publication. Initially her death had been connected to the political situation. Once that was clarified, there was several speculations about her mental state and whether she has “mental health issues.” On social media there have been some discussions about the pressures students are under in relationship to their advisors. There is something about this story that has stayed with me. Perhaps in the ways in which it stands apart in a sea of arrests, protests, and deaths and demands its own place and its own reckoning.

4. Lastly the spokesperson for the “Headquarter of Enjoining Good and Prohibiting Vice” (I really don’t like this translation…) seems to have confirmed the news of the end of “guidance patrols” only to say that a new plan for veiling and “chastity” was in the works that would be undertaken in “a newer framework and by using relevant technology and in an atmosphere that is not unilateral.” I find this language rather chilling.

What’s on My Telly?

• Morocccccoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! I hate penalty kicks but hey, sometimes it’s a satisfying ending!

• I’m watching Fleishman is in Trouble. I read the novel when it came out and at the time I thought: It’s good, it’s just not all that (the novel had rave rave rave reviews). Among the many things that I love about television as an art form is that it can take things and make you see a depth that for whatever reason, you never gave a character. It could be in the acting, casting, location, pacing, or just because reading a novel late at night is a different thing than watching an episode of TV every week. Whatever it is, it works wonderfully for Fleishman is in Trouble. And honestly, I am delightfully surprised that the title is a lot more clever than I realized when I read it. It’s there staring at your face and you don’t see it until you do.

These are some of the true things for today. Until soon!