Progressive Youth Organization slams administration in a statement

BEIRUT - The Progressive Youth Organization (PYO), a faction of Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), said in a statement last month that the administration at the American University of Beirut should live up to its standards and offer a service that was worth its high tuition.

The PYO launched this year’s electoral campaign with an anti-administration statement. PYO denounced AUB’s new regulations that students pay for their courses before registration.

It also said that the administration should be considerate in light of the region’s deteriorating socioeconomic situation and its reflection on the ability of sponsors to pay the tuition of their dependents.

The organization which enjoys the support of most Druze students in the university endorses in principle teachings of the PSP’s founder late Lebanese leader Kamal Jumblatt. Its presence in AUB has witnessed several ups and downs until in 2002 it faced a defeat after striking an alliance with its ideological opponent the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP).

The group achieved better electoral results, however, in other private and public universities such as Beirut’s branch of the Lebanese American University and the Lebanese University.