Nadine Farrag

Every election season in spring, low voter turnout at the Student Union presidential elections indicate that AUC students are not particularly interested in the electing their representatives, and show little concern with student politics in general. According to a poll conducted by The Caravan last week, 37 percent of the students surveyed are planning not to vote.

The current economic and political instability, coupled with shortfalls in foreign direct investment since the January 25 Revolution, may be starting to bite at AUC's scholarship programs.

The Leadership for Education and Development (LEAD) Program used to provide full tuition and accommodation fees for 54 students annually for a period of six undergraduate years at AUC. Now, the scholarship has been limited to only five years.

After facing a legal uphill battle due to lack of licensing, the band Cairokee were able to win the day and perform at the opening of AUC's Developers Inc., a campus club that aims to empower people and to develop their communities, at Bassily Hall.

The trouble started when a representative fr

Dozens of employees at the State-owned Radio and Television building in Maspero ended their strike last week after the Ministry of Information agreed to their demands to be categorized as "engineers" rather than "technicians."

Some employees, who have been striking for weeks inside Maspero's studios, have complained about not being equally treated to other staff because their job classifications have long been stalled at "technicians."

Employees at Maspero are generally divided into four categories: engineers, media staff, technicians and janitors.

AUC student organizations voted in favor of establishing the Student Organizations Council (SOC).

Student leaders, representatives of the Office of Student Development (OSD), Student Senate members and the Student Union (SU) were present at the meeting on February 1.

Student representatives on the AUC ad-hoc budget committee proposed a new budget model that implements tuition increase caps when they met the Board of Trustees on February 12.

The proposed plan would both help reduce the university's deficit and ensure students are not faced with unexpected tuition hikes, according to Mohamed Hegazy and Yousif Mahchi, economics seniors, who have been working on the proposal since last November after they were appointed to the budget committee.