On University Registrations

Ah registration. Ever since my first semester, it's always been a stressful event. Despite there being an online system, students always have to try to register as soon as possible before the sections close and they either end up with a terrible schedule or have to go beg someone to let one more person into their section.

Registration this time was exceptionally stressful, however. Not only did they make it on a Friday, when no one has the option of going to the university if something doesn't work out, but they also made it on Christmas day. Now it would've been fine if all we had to do was simply log in when it starts and register, but after 5 semesters of experience with our registration department, we know very well that they never start on time, so all we do is keep refreshing the page until it opens. So assuming this year wouldn't be any different, I, along with half the student body spent 6-8 hours refreshing the same page. And when it did finally start at 2 PM, turns out they changed the entire system so we couldn't register for half our courses.

It was an unbelievable waste of time, and I decided to send an email about it to both the registration department and the university's president. The registration department didn't even budge, but much to my surprise, the president actually replied a day later telling me to come see him. He told me that my comments were taken into consideration and even apologized for setting registration on Christmas day and I must say I was very impressed. We tend to complain a lot, but I felt like this time complaining actually helped in doing some good.

And this is why I urge everyone who has a problem to complain, to the right person at least. Maybe nothing will happen, but then again you might actually get your opinion heard and help solve whatever problem you and a whole lot of other people are facing.

City Light Hack

City Light Hack is a project that was performed by the IEEE student branch in GJU in 30/10/2009 and was deemed a truly successful project, the first of its kind in the Middle East. IEEE (Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers) is a global organizations with more than 300,000 members in universities around the world, and the GJU branch's first project was City Light Hack.

What they did is they turned a building in Madina Monawarra St. with 6x5 windows into a big dot matrix screen by controlling the building's lights using a computer and a board. It's not as easy as it sounds, there's A LOT of programming involved and it took a bunch of 20 students about 3 months of programming and trial and error and succeeded in a project that was only performed in a couple of more countries in the world (it failed in Dubai!).

The video below shows scenes from the show, which despite the rainy whether gathered quite an audience and even caused traffic jams because the people driving would just stop their cars and watch. The police even tried to stop the show at one point!



So congratulations to the team and here's to more amazing achievements!

Event reported in Ammon

Project website

Thabahtoona, Lay Off GJU!

Thabahtoona, The National Campaign for Defending Students' Rights has issued yet another statement criticizing GJU, the German Jordanian University, this time because of the decision to remove it from the unified admission program. This means that students have to apply to the university separately, unlike with other public universities, where the student would send a list of choices of preferred universities and majors in descending order to the coordination office, and then depending on the student's average, the number of students applying, etc, the student will be accepted in one of the choices they have listed.

Now before I delve into the reasons the university it is not listed along with other universities I'll give an overview about it. GJU, where I'm a second year student, was founded only 3 years ago. It is partly funded by the Jordanian government and partly funded by the German government. Since the official campus near Madaba is still under construction, the temporary location is at the Royal Scientific Society, in 3 buildings that are rented by the university.

The reason why it is not part of the unified admission program is very simple: the university's fees and programs are different from other universities, and when it was included, a large percentage of students who registered backed out later because they were surprised by the requirements and the fees. The higher fees, another subject of criticism, are attributed to the different educational approach used by the university. The maximum capacity of students to eventually be reached is only 5000, a maximum of only 30 students are allowed in one class, students are obliged to study German and must spend their fourth year in Germany, to name some of the features that distinguish the university.

I'm not saying this to promote the university (believe me, I'm not one to do that), nor to criticize the campaign, because they do have a good purpose. But I'm sure there are other more important things to push for. Wastas in universities, improving the quality of education itself or biased professors off the top of my head. So lay off!

Laptop For Each Student Fraud

In January, students of Jordanian universities, including mine were informed of the "laptop for each student initiative" which provides students with laptops that are to be paid for in monthly installments of 9.95 or 14.95 JDs, depending on the option you choose. Even though the specifications of the laptops were unclear at the time (we didn't find out the brand until later), I went ahead and signed up. I mean 15 JDs a month? That sounded pretty reasonable. And they had us submit all sorts of paperwork in time for deadlines, or else our applications would be ignored. It all seemed very professional and organized.

Come March, we had to confirm our applications. Again, in time for very strict deadlines. They changed their minds and decided that instead of monthly installments, they'd have the students pay 90 JD each semester, and demanded that a parent come down immediately to sign the consent form and make an initial payment. Fine. No one complained. We were informed our laptops would arrive in two weeks time. When we asked around after nothing happened in two weeks, the university blamed it on the Ministry of Communications but assured us they would arrive shortly.

And here we are, the second payment is due in 2 months and no laptops, no nothing. Frankly, I had forgotten about the whole thing until I read this on Osama Romoh's blog. Apparently, there are a lot of students who signed up and were told the exact same thing.

This is ridiculous! With prices of laptops going down, it would've been cheaper for me to just buy the laptop. Even if they deliver the laptops this week, they'd still be making money off them. And if we want to back out, we can't. This article says that the students' demands at a refund were refused by the universities. What a scam.

I'm going to go down to the university and demand the refund, and if they say no, which I'm sure they will, I'm going to take the laptop whenever it should arrive. But I won't be making a single payment. Ra7 anashef damhom. I don't care whose fault is it, this is absurd. Stop treating us like idiots.