The Manifest of Iranian Student Council Election

The Manifest of Sharif University Student Council Election has been distributed among the students as follows:

Councils will guarantee our interests
No body will guarantee our interest other than ourselves. The idea that an ideal system would assess our problems and resolve the issues is nothing but illusion. This is due to scarcity of resources and too many demands. Hence if we don’t present our cases persuasively they will not be met. Our interests are tide together where we all share following demands:
That we have the right to have top level professors, educational facilities, and updated laboratory equipments.

We have the right of free access to books – now its few years that we have not had any free coupons to purchase books. Perhaps authorities believe we do not deserve to select our own choice of books.

The quality of food should improve. Monitoring the food should be carried out more often.
We have the right to time of and recreation times which will enable us think free and create our own ideas. We have the right to camping, musical concerts, cultural seminars and we have to have proper access to sport accessible to all students.
We have the right to security and we should not feel threatened by spelling our thought and way of thinking. No laws should break our legitimacy of our right to think freely.
We have the right to participate in social and political associations and follow our expectations and demands
There should be sufficient respect to our being student and our individual personality should be respected and dignified. We have to be free to chose the colors of our clothes and at the University‘s Gate we should be dealt with respect and with dignity.

We have the right to protest to achieve our goals and our objectives and we have the right to free associations to pursue our demands
The university should respect our associations and should support them.

Every one has the right to earn equal for the equal labor which questions the student work that is a kind of exploitive attitude toward working students
We demand the systematic isolation of some student to be ceased and we need to be faced with proper and equal approach to all. The approach stemming out of gender discrimination must be uprooted in the whole university. This has ended up dividing us in groups that there is no necessity and has diminished our resources on the campus and in classes.
Above mentioned issues are common shared problems which we all need to tackle at every level. Therefore our interests are entangled within which needs our cooperation to be resolved. In our pursuing our rights we will be facing the authorities in the university which we need to attract their consent in order to actualize our rightful demands. This mutual enactment is what councils are set for and is nothing more than practicing democracy. Democracy is when a power institution will allow an independent group to stand up for its rights. Now that we have the opportunity to put in practice our perception of democracy and carry out a free and independent election we should take the opportunity and take the most of this opportunity. We should always remember that our representatives in the council are only the messengers to put forward our requests and we should walk along with them on this path to fulfill our demands.

Translator: Nasrin Azadeh