Calls for 'immediate action' against decision to grant UJ guards judicial police status

AMMAN — The National Campaign for Students' Rights (Thabahtoona) on Saturday called on student groups and human rights organisations to “take immediate action” over the decision by the administration of the University of Jordan (UJ) to grant judicial police status to the security personnel on campus.

The measure was announced earlier this week by UJ head of Security Department Khamis Zubaidi, who stated that university guards have been granted law enforcement status to transfer students directly to the court without notice to the Deanship of Student Affairs. 

In a statement issued on Sunday, the campaign demanded the suspension of the decision, stressing that it will "constrict the freedom of the students”, expressing surprise over its implementation “at a time when the new president of the university has not yet been chosen”. 

“The decision comes after a series of protests led by Thabahtoona and human rights organisations to oppose the provisions on granting public universities’ guards law enforcement status in the 2018 public universities law,” the campaigners stated, noting that “no relevant response was received from the government at the time”. 

The issue was also raised by members of the UJ Students Union, who spread messages across social media platforms to state their rejection of the decision. 

“If you look at the events that have taken place at the university over the past years — the fights or the sole fact that a student could sneak a gun at the campus — they are scary enough to understand that this kind of authority could actually be necessary in order to make us feel safe,” UJ student Lubna Mohammad told The Jordan Times. 

“But, instead, we feel threatened,” she continued, warning that “security guards at the university are not trained enough to hold such positions and you cannot just grant these powers to anyone”.

“This kind of authority should only be given to actual trained police officers,” Mohammad added, warning that “we have witnessed guards using their authority to scare people for no reason or use it to their own interest”.

UJ's administration was not available for comment, despite several attempts by The Jordan Times. 

“What the university administration believes in when applying this is that they are protecting students, but what they don’t realise is that they are putting the threat in front of us,” UJ student Rama Awwad expressed, stressing that “they have never felt the way students feel when they are being searched by a guard just because they decided that they look suspicious — which is relative to the personal judgement of the university guard”.

“If we had real police officers holding law enforcement status on campus, we would be safer, but instead, they are granting this power to guards with no training or experience at all,” Awwad added.