6/16 + 3

A ton had happened here since my post three days ago. I'm gonna try to cover it all.

First, the "tutors," (i.e. the lowest official level of student control) called meetings with the classes to try to calm them down. I sat in on one (class 2 to be precise) and the tutor pulled out every trick in the book. She made the students wait for her (to make them nervous), she talked about getting no sleep or food for 24 hours (to try to get their pity), warned them about the iminent exams, cospiritorially asked them to agree with her that they "had not gone out”(wink wink). I thought it worked. The students came in angry and seemed to leave confused if not entirely calm.

On Friday night, nothing happened. On Saturday, nothing happened. The broken windows started to be replaced. The college tried to remove all the stones from campus.

Yesterday, I went swimming with some friends. When we left, students were starting to gather in front of the administration building. When we got back, there was a huge crowd. I went to see what was going on. They had a sign that said "[we] want honestry, [we] want freedom, [we] want human rights." Pretty shortly the administration agreed to a meeting in the auditorium.

Four senior administrators sat in the front, the vice president (the real leader of the school), some guy I didn't recognise (and who didn't really talk at all), the president (a relative of Wang Guangya, the founder, and certainly a sinecure position) and the party secretary. They each gave short speaches (over student yelling). The president basically said "I am the president of the school." The vice president seemed to say something about there being some problems that they might be able to fix and some they cannot. The party secretary caused more trouble by telling the students they were wrong and to calm down. Needless to say this just made them angrier.

After some chanting and yelling, a student (actually one of mine) went down and tried to play the mediator. She made too major mistakes. First, she tried to be reasonable and the students are not ready for that yet. Then, when the students started to yell at her, she called them "children." Good way to make a crowd angry. They yelled at her to step down. She said that she would step down if someone better would step forward. There was some confusion, then she was taken off stage by another student and a microphone was taken into the crowd for students to start to air their greivances. This initially was somewhat disorganized. And there was some response from the leaders (as well as some other guy who didn't identify himself and who basically said there was nothing to be done). The best moment here was when the vice president started to reply and the crowd shouted for the president. He (of course) was unable to say anything of note.

Then, another foreign teacher, who was apparently drunk (and an idiot, if I may say so), approached the stage and yelled at the president to leave. One of the FAO workers tried to remove him, which infuriated the students. He returned to a seat. At this point, the students got a little more organized. One (of mine, I'm so proud!) actually had made a list of greivances (instead of just yelling out whatever she could think of). Among other things, she said that although the students had broken windows, they had not hurt anyone. The campus guards, on the other hand had beaten some students for taking pictures (I didn't see this, but it has been confirmed to me by quite a few whitnesses). She then proceded to talk about the diplomas, the lack of freedom on campus and a number of other things. After her, others continued to air their grievances, including one of the girls who was hit by the guards (she was almost histerical).

The meeting started to break down. Some students started to get up to leave, other students yelled at them to stay. They started saying something (I think) about a hunger strike. At some point, two of the administrators left. There was a call for the others to leave. The two came back. Students started throwing empty water bottles at the stage (there had been some of this from the beginning, but it began to happen in earnest). The drunk idiot of a foreign teacher threw one too. This cause the private security that had been hired to start to go into the crowd and point out people who had been throwing things. THis made the students crazy and they started to charge the isles. I went out and yelled at the security people to leave, recognising that if they continued to go into the crowd, there very well might be another riot (not what anyone wants). The guards left, and so did the administrators. Students started to break seats and lights in the room. I yelled at them to stop, that it just made them look bad.

After the meeting, I councilled some groups of students on what I thought they should do. I had decided that I would not take an active role, but I will continue to council the students on what I think is best, try to keep people from getting hurt and act as a whitness. I told them to stop breaking things and to make sure they don't post any pictures of students on the internet. I also counciled them to make a concrete list of things the school has done wrong and what they think can be done to fix it. Finally, I told them to try to get the newspaper involved (which might be easier said than done).

Even if the newspaper does not get involved, word is still spreading. One of my friends amond the students said she has old classmates who have been messaging her for details after reading about "Shengda 6 16 event" or "Shengda certificate event" on the internet. Also, apparently students are not allowed to bring watermellons onto campus for fear that they will throw them.

Today, I woke up to yelling. The students are again massed in front of the administration builidng. It appears that about half of them are refusing to take exams. An announcement over the PA keeps telling students that it is wrong to skip exams and telling them they should do the right thing even if their friends are protesting their tests. It doesn't seem to be doing much good. Outside the gate of the school are six vans of SWAT (or the Chinese equivalent) along with six other miscelaneous police vehicles. At this point, I'm going back outside to see what happens and to try to keep this from reaching a real confrontation.