Student Movement Profile: No Frontiers

Mansour Omeira
Outlook

Wednesday, November 3, 2004 

 

   No Frontiers is an independent leftist group at AUB founded in 1997 by members of the Human Rights and Peace Club and the Arab Heritage Club. Based on broad leftist principles, it currently includes Social Democrats, Communists, Socialists, Greens, and Anarchists working together for a better society through grassroots activism.

 

   "No Frontiers has a non-hierarchal structure: it has neither a president or leader nor a reference outside the university", explains Cultural Committee member Ramzi Rafih. Instead, the group is run by committees elected by all members: the Internal Committee, the Cultural Committee which organizes cultural events including weekly discussions open to all AUB students, the Syndical Committee consisting of SRC members and club representatives, and the Political Committee which represents the group with other political parties. Each of these committees is represented in an Administrative Committee that coordinates the group's work. The group is self-funded by monthly contributions of the members, and all elected officials are recallable at any time. "Members cannot be forced to take actions they disagree with, not even by majority vote; however, a majority can restrain members from taking actions against its will," explains Rafih. When members graduate from AUB, they lose their right to vote, to preserve the group's democracy and independence. NF graduates went on to build different leftist organizations with others with varying success, including groups in other universities, the Direct Line and recently the Democratic Left Movement, as Rafih points out.

 

   Human Rights and Peace Club President Rana El Khoury recalls some of the club's recent activities, some of which were held in cooperation with other clubs or NGOs: exhibitions on Autonomic Expression, Sexuality and Politics in Lebanon, and the Regime's Achievements; discussions on Lebanese Independence, the Lebanese University, Civil Service as an Alternative to Military Service, and Homosexual Rights, talks with Anwar Yasin, the International Solidarity Movement, and former civil war combatants, and a lecture by Tariq Ali. Also, the club has displayed movies such as Bowling for Columbine, Che Guevara, and Victim. As for the Arab Heritage Club, it has organized, in addition to the activities with HRPC, various cultural events such as concerts by Khaled Habr and Sami Hawat, as well as the Book Fair held every semester where students exchange books at half price, as indicated by Club President Nabil Diab.

 

   "The Group can effectively represent students because it has no figure or party to represent," explains SC coordinator Yara Saab. According to her, NF's USFC members have in the past year presented a number of proposals. One is on the Grade Point Average, which included a recommendation for grade indexing on transcripts. Another is on Instructor Course Evaluation, which recommended adopting a policy of optional disclosure of ICE results, "but was voted down by a majority of student representatives even though 83 percent of students wanted ICE results to be fully published," as Saab mentions. A third one is for the creation of a website for the USFC, which is still pending and should be launched through a design competition in the near future. In addition, they proposed and drafted the USFC funding request procedures that are currently in place, recommended amending Yearbook bylaws to become consistent with them, and proposed having Outdoors student-run. On a more political level, Saab states that NF's USFC members also proposed the procedure for issuing statements signed by the Students of AUB, and were allegedly behind most of the statements that were issued, including the ones on Freedom of Expression, the Lebanese University, and the Armenian Genocide. In the FAS SRC, Saab continues, NF members contributed in organizing the Iha' group concert and the Binnisbe la Bokra Shu play, and had students write letters of support to Samir Quntar; they also successfully proposed to have FAS SRC's Outdoors games free of charge, while all others charged fees. Two current USFC members are affiliated with No Frontiers; they are Yara Saab and Mansour Omeira.