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Indonesian colleges breed violent students
WTF?
By Devi Asmarani
Schools are the new breeding grounds for violence in Indonesia if the murders and acts of brutality at colleges and universities over the last month are anything to go by. These unconnected incidents reflect the stark realities of campus life these days - physical toughness coupled with total submissiveness to seniors is the only way to social acceptance.
sounds like good future muslims
The state-run Institute of Public Affairs (STPDN), where freshman Wahyu Hidayat was beaten to death by senior students earlier this month, is an extreme example of violence breeding violence. Senior students there brutally bash new students, most of whom are being groomed for promising posts in the civil service. It is part of a twisted ’character building’ programme that freshmen are subjected to during their first two years. By the time they reach their final year, they are out for blood themselves.
great - train the "civil service" to beat the crap out of each other...anyone else see irony here?
Many students who cannot take the abuse end up fleeing the sprawling complex that houses their dormitories in West Java. Some unfortunate ones who decide to stay suffer permanent injuries. At least three have died since the college’s inception in 1992. For years, faculty members and officials have looked the other way, often hushing up incidents to prevent police investigations.
"He fell down the stairs...all 14 flights"
Those who come to STPDN’s defence say its military-style education system makes it unique, but that is not how it looks. Earlier this month, a student was killed in a clash between two rival organisations in the Indonesian Muslim University in Makassar, South Sulawesi. At the Veteran University in Jakarta, a fight between students from two different departments left three severely wounded. Two people have also died in as many years in college initiation rites. There have been endless calls on the government to ban such practices at universities. But in a country where even teenage boys slug it out with students from rival schools in a sort of rite of passage, a campus ban is not going to stop the culture of violence. Said noted psychologist Sartono Mukadis: ’Violence has become the lingua-franca of our people. It is the most communicative language because it gets attention, rather than civil talks.’
Two threads — the turbans, and the legacy of the Japanese occupation in WWII — meet...
But the language of violence has spread too far. People here have seen too much of it at every level of society. They want that to change, and the college which produces civil servants looks like a good place to start.
Teach 'em blood lust and fighting skills and then put 'em in a civil service job? Smart
Posted by: Frank G 2003-09-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19266