AUI-S Students Campaigned for Sulaimani, Read the Whole Story

An e-mail sent out from Melani Standish revealed the plan to remove Sulaimani from AUI-S’s official name. In few hours, everyone on campus was speaking about a decision to change the university’s name and remove the ‘S’ from AUI-S. That ‘S’ stand for Sulaimani.

Other sources both in the faculty and dean office had confirmed the news of the name change from AUI-S to AUI.

Student from Sulaimani and other parts of Iraq responded quickly by campaigning on Facebook against the decision. Students arranged a protest at 12:30 pm in front of the main building.

Dr. James Harrigan had sent an email to all the students entitled “No Subject” threatening them with not tolerating any kind of protest against the decision. In his e-mail, Dr. Harrigan has written:

“Please be aware that protests are not appropriate until all of the facts have been disseminated and considered.  Protests which take the form of class boycotts will not be tolerated.  Regular academic life will go on, and we will discuss this in a rational way in due course.”

AUI-S Students Signing a Declaration to Protest the Decision

AUI-S students went on with their plans arranging the demonstration in front of the main building. The dean came to convince the students give up the demonstration idea. The demonstration didn’t end. After showing the strength and dedication of the student body, AUI-S students decided to end the demonstration in front of 

the main building and start a signature campaign.

The campaign for collecting signatures was aimed at protesting the decision to remove Sulaimani from university’s name.

“We have collected hundreds of signatures and we will present them to all the responsible parties in this case to nullify this wrong decision,” said Bahman Hassan the head of the ‘We Love Sulaimani’ campaign.