Just yesterday I wrote about the current student protests going on here in Frankfurt and now I again have something to write about it. Last night the barricated building was evacuated by the Frankfurt police.

I had university until 6 p.m. yesterday and wondered, along with a few of my fellow students, why 27 police cars rushed by us with sirens and lights. We were philosophing about a bank robbery or something to the extent, but when I came home, I found out what was actually going on. Over a Twitter account from a guy being right in the middle of it all, you were able to follow the happenings promptly. Later on a regional tv station broadcasted a report. It seems that things went haywire: The police are reporting that the operation went smooth, the students that were present claim the police acted brutal. Furthermore they are now demanding the resignation of the university president, because he did not announce the evacuation before hand.

Momentarily, both sides seem to be going aboard with their feelings and perceptions. Both partys, president and the participated students, think they are right and the others are not. Within the next days, students are planning on going on with the demonstraion and want to express their demands and wishes to the university president. The university president himself wrote a mass mail to all students of university, where he legitimates his descision from wednesday evening.

Personally, I can understand his actions. People have willfully damaged a university building and this can not be tolerated. Because of this, it is not a peaceful protest anymore. The opinions concerning the police operation differ from each other – and so does mine. Since I was not there when all this happened, I cannot judge whether the police acted brutal, how some described it. Anyhow: Handling people with kid gloves and kindly asking the people to leave is not possible during an evacuation in this form. Before the evactuation, the president had kindly asked the students to leave the building and about two thirds followed his suggestions. I definetely do not want to legitimate a possible brutal police operation here! More so I want everyone to see it in the right perspective: Willful damage is not tolerable!

For me it is still unbelievable, how students can destroy their own university and at the same time protest for more money investments in education. (Currently there are also assumptions that non-students were part of the group and were just there to perform vandalism, but this is not prooved yet.) The money that will be used for renovation means that the budget has to be cut down somewhere else. Meaning: Less money for certain things at university such as small tutorials and support in the individual fields of studies. Exactly the issues that the students wanted to draw attention to.

Another side-effect: Now all the students are put together into one big bowl. We are the ones who vandalized. We are the ones who cannot protest peacefully. Although these students are only a very small fraction of the whole. The general idea behind this demonstration – the demand for better education – is now gone.

For those who are interested in actually seeing what I have written about, I can recommend two links:
A slide show from one of the Frankfurt daily newspapers on the evacuation and the official pictures on flickr which Frankfurt University took and sent along with the statement from the president.