Nis Dean: Students Protests Not Color Revolution

Protest in Nis (Photo: Biljana Ljubisavljevic)

The Nis School of Philosophy's new dean Vladimir Z. Jovanovic has said that student protests are not a color revolution as well as that the School has no intention of using force to cancel the student blockade.

"I am not inclined toward attributing the protests to a 'color revolution,' for two clear reasons. The first is how the protests unfolded, because if we were talking about an orchestrated 'color revolution,' things would have unfolded differently after the gathering on March 15. Instead of that, the intensity of the protests dropped and they changed shape. The second is the fact that we all know a large number of people for whom we can definitely say were internally motivated to protest, and were not instructed externally," Jovanovic, who was elected dean in June and whose term begins on Oct. 1, told the NIN weekly.

He said that there had always been student protests and that there always would be because young people were inclined to react more quickly and readily to certain things in their environment that they did not approve of and which they felt they needed to react to. He said "this is in some way natural and entirely expected" adding that "that this generation of young academicians has slightly different standards, is not as susceptible to the influence of classic media outlets, is connected to its peers in other countries and its tolerance threshold with regard to certain phenomena in society was simply crossed."

He also warned that "the protest must not be allowed to turn into an unacceptable striving to solve the crisis through violence, in an attempt to replace the government which was de facto elected using illegal means."