Shady Onsy Halim Rizkallah graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, Assiut University, in June 2006 and ranked top among his colleagues in his department – Major Electric Engineering, IT & Control section. Naturally, he waited to be appointed as an assistant professor lecturer as the department was in dire need for extra staff members especially after they opened a new Section for Mechelectronics?? And Robot.
Due to the limited numbers of assistant professors, they asked several times for more staff because of the teaching loads which includes giving lectures to the preparatory year in the Faculty of Engineering, the first and second year in Electrical engineering Department, Communication and electronics Section and Power and Machinery Section.
However, the Faculty’s administration decided not to appoint any assistant professor from the IT and Control. Instead, they nominated two graduates from the Communication and Electronics Department and a third one from the Power and Machinery Department. Shady’s dream was thus dumped and he had no other choice but to apply for post graduate studies to prepare his Masters Degree. He presented all the needed papers and paid the due fees in August 2006 and after two month he went to the Post Graduate office to check his registration.
Shockingly, the Post Graduate Office informed him that they have no file for him, but upon his insistence they conducted a search to look for his papers, and they discovered that the papers Shady delivered were missing from the file on which his name is inscribed and were inserted in another file with the name Shady Abdel Moety! Worse, there was a decision from the Faculty’s Council rejecting the request of Shady Abdel Moety to be enlisted in post graduate studies on the grounds that ‘‘supervisors for theses are not enough.’’
More Surprisingly, Shady discovered that the Electric Engineering Department has arranged supervisors for four other colleagues from the IT and Control Department – whom he surpassed in grades and rank. The first was second ranked on his department, and the three others were graduated some years ago with general grade Good. I am not writing their names intentionally as I still believe that our fight is not with the four colleagues but with corruption represented in officials who manipulate rules and exercise their power with no heed to morals or justice.
Shady did not give up his dream of continuing his post graduate studies. It is true that there was no explanation behind taking his papers and inserting them in another different file, but he has transcended such a fiasco and focused on his main purpose. He tried his best to seek professors from the teaching staff to supervise his thesis and finally managed to get the approval of two professors. In his quest to achieve this dream, he was incessantly faced with down heartening remarks and cheap pieces of advice to seek some work abroad or try another university away from Assuit University or just give the whole matter of studies up because after all it will do him no good!
This complaint is addresses to a large number of officials like The President of Assiut University, the dean and The Minister of Higher Education. The real hope lies in inspecting these cases closely because they entwine more than one crime beginning from corruption, manipulating official documents, assassinating the rights of scientific skills and ending up with violating the concepts of equality and human rights.
