In the wake of protests in Egypt by millions of its citizens and their supporters that began in Jan. 25, four UCSD students at the American University in Cairo were evacuated from Egypt. This came after the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory for the country.
A total of 30 UC-affiliated individuals left the country, including 19 UC students scheduled to begin a semester abroad and an 11-person team of archaeology students, faculty and staff from UCLA that was digging 200 miles south of Cairo.
The individuals were transported from Egypt to Barcelona and were expected to return to California during the weekend of Feb. 5.
According to UCOP spokesman Ricardo Vazquez, all expenses are being covered by the UC insurance plan.
Vazquez also stated that the students who were set to begin their spring semester in Egypt now have the option to study at any other EAP program in the world. Any additional costs will be paid for by the UC system.
“We anticipate being able to resume classes for undergraduates only on Feb. 13,” AUC President Lisa Anderson said in a statement released on Feb. 6. “Our principal concern must be the safety and security of our students, faculty and staff.”
Carly Grijalva, a UCSD student who transferred to AUC last year and is expecting to return to school Feb. 13, spoke via Skype from Egypt. Grijalva returned to Cairo yesterday, after being outside the capitol.
“I think the AUC students actually started to mobilize more before this, with the workers’ strikes in the fall, they staged sit-ins, there were kids campaigning for workers to be paid more, to get better employment,” Grijalva said. “It was actually a really big deal on campus.”
Although Grijalva has not participated in protests and does not know anyone that has been injured in them, she and her peers have been affected by the damage to the campus.
“The downtown campus has been affected immensely; there is damage, Tahrir is occupied,” Grijalva said. “I think that right now they are probably very glad that they decided to move [to New Cairo].”
None of the UC study abroad staff or faculty who were in Egypt have been injured in the popular uprising.
“I wouldn’t say that it is safe,” Grijalva said. “But I wouldn’t call it unsafe.”
In addition, protests in downtown San Diego have continued to express solidarity with those demanding reform in Egypt and Middle East.
“It’s the youth who are uprising now, and a lot of them are students, and they want a change for the future,” Grijalva said.
Egypt’s newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, met with representatives of key opposition groups on Feb. 5 to negotiate for peaceful transition to a democratic government from president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign.
