“What do we need to do to have a better Egypt?”

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The past couple of months have witnessed several major incidents in the Arab world that received little if any reaction from students at the American University in Cairo (AUC). The last of these is the Lebanese civil war, which is starting again with clashes all the way into Beirut. The Arab League will have a meeting and will probably solve absolutely nothing.
We are silent or unaware while people are dying everyday, not only in Lebanon, but in Iraq, Palestine, Sudan and even in Egypt. In the Arab world, if people aren’t dying from guns and pistols, they are dying from hunger, they are dying from frustration or they are dying from desperation.
In the past, we, as students of this university, never waited for someone to tell us to speak up and have a voice. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was university students who mobilized people for certain causes. Now, it is demoralizing to see that even the anniverssary of 60 years of the occupation of Palestine went by without a significant reaction from our student body. The Nusrah student coalition, which was supposed to bring the entire student body together to raise awareness about issues in the Arab world, was planning a sit-in on May 14 to mourn of the Nakbah, or the 1948 creation of Israel. But the sit-in never materialized because the coalition couldn’t attract enough committed students to participate.
We have become like the Arab League, an empty voice. We have silenced our voices until they are no more. Remember our rising up against the Iraqi war; remember our reactions during the Intifada; remember our voices that would not be silenced against the emergency law in Egypt?
Remember AUC students, we DO have a voice.  We must use it. 
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