Last update - 00:00 04/12/2007
Hebrew University students lock campus gates for 24 hours
By Tamara Traubmann
Students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem locked the gates Monday to the Mount Scopus and Givat Ram campuses for 24 hours, in protest over the senior faculty strike now in its eighth week. On Tuesday, students and lecturers will lock the gates to the Tel Aviv University campus for a day.
At Hebrew U., there were clashes between the students blocking the gates, and students and instructors who wanted to enter the campus.
In other protest activity, hundreds of students and a few dozen lecturers demonstrated outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem. The students demanded that the government resolve the crisis in higher education and end the professors' strike.
Itai Sonshein, chairman of the national Student Union, said he hopes that student pressure will shorten the strike.
An advertising campaign recently launched by the union in newspapers, billboards and on the Internet features images of a sleeping Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Education Minister Yuli Tamir and Finance Minister Roni Bar-On. Above them it says: "Wake up bums! The semester is in danger!"
The demonstrators called on Olmert and Tamir to resign.
In Be'er Sheva, some 200 students and lecturers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev marched to the government office complex in the city.
The Student Union at BGU has decided to set up a joint headquarters to support the campaigns of adjunct instructors, teaching assistants, senior faculty and the striking high school teachers.
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