Advocacy movement criticises decision to suspend polytechnic college students ‘over Facebook posts’

AMMAN — A decision to “punish” university students over their views on social media websites raises questions on the legality of holding them accountable for their personal opinions, according to a students’ rights activist.

Recently, two students at Balqa Applied University’s Polytechnic Engineering College in Amman’s Marka area were temporarily suspended due to what the administration claims were “offensive Facebook posts”.

Fakher Daas, coordinator of the National Campaign for Defending Students’ Rights (Thabahtoona) said there is no legal text that enables universities to hold students accountable for stating their views on social media websites.

“Furthermore, it is very difficult to take action against students over what they write on social media because their accounts can be easily hacked or used by other people,” he told The Jordan Times on Wednesday.

Mohammad Atrash, a 21-year-old student of civil engineering at the polytechnic, was suspended for one semester two weeks ago over a post on his private Facebook page.

“Last semester, I wrote something on Facebook that was misunderstood. Although I made it general and did not name names, it caused a clash with a professor who thought it was directed against him,” Atrash told The Jordan Times recently.

Noting that the post was about the attitude of some professors before the deanship elections, the A student was summoned for interrogation by the administration.

“They did not focus on the Facebook status in the interrogations as much as the sit-in I participated in few months ago to call for students’ rights,” claimed the senior, who is now on the verge of losing his JD7,000 scholarship grant from a local fund after the suspension.

His fellow student, Majdi Taamari, is in no better position.

The 21-year-old mechanical engineering student was “suddenly” summoned by a disciplinary committee that questioned him over a Facebook post that was claimed to insult a professor.

“I didn’t even write that status, but a decision to suspend me for one semester came out last week anyway,” Taamari, who is also involved in students’ rights advocacy, told The Jordan Times recently. 

In support of the two students, hundreds of their polytechnic classmates protested inside campus on Tuesday, calling on the management to go back on its decision, according to eyewitnesses.

Officials at the university were not available for comment despite attempts by The Jordan Times to contact them for several days.

The Internet is an “open” and “free” world, Daas said.

“You cannot punish students for their personal opinions,” said the activist, noting that “every Jordanian has written at least two to three Facebook ‘statuses’ that they could be held accountable for by the state”.

“In this case, choosing who to sue or who to neglect becomes a very selective process that is used for other purposes,” charged the Thabahtoona coordinator, explaining that social media posts can “become a tool to restrict students’ activism”.