A night at the college blockade: The opposite of anarchy

Two hours before midnight, Jove Ilića Street is unusually lively. From several windows two neighboring colleges, Faculty of Political Sciences i Faculty of Organizational Sciences, the lights are coming. The soft patter of the rain breaks up the roar of students' voices, like the one usually heard in the morning hours on weekdays, when students arrive for regular lectures and exercises.

This time, the reason for the noise is extracurricular activities - blockades. At the entrance to FON, since Friday, December 6, there has been a banner hanging "And FON has stopped". The neighboring FPN entered the blockade three days earlier. There are no regular classes at any of these faculties, and their premises have become a temporary home for students who joined the blockades as a form of pressure on the government.

More than a month has passed since the tragedy at the Novi Sad railway station in which 15 people died and two were seriously injured. The students demand that the documentation related to the reconstruction be published, as well as to stop the prosecution of those who took to the streets to demand responsibility, only to be arrested afterwards. One of the demands is the prosecution of the people who, on November 22, during the "Stop, Serbia" protest, physically attacked the students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, who they claim are members of the Serbian Progressive Party. In addition, if it turns out that these people are employees of public companies, as is suspected, the students demand their dismissal from their positions.

It is not anarchy

At the main entrance to the Faculty of Political Sciences, I make my way through the crowd. Part of the students went out to light a cigarette - smoking is not allowed in the faculty premises, a rule that is respected even during the blockade. The other part is on task and checks the indexes of the newly arrived at the door. Only students are allowed to enter the faculty.

There are at least 30 people scattered inside - mostly those who will spend the night there. As they tell me, this number is higher during the day, and students come in shifts. There are also those who are there day and night. A plenum is organized every day to decide on the continuation of the blockade.

One auditorium was converted into a cinema hall. In the second, the Crvena zvezda basketball game is broadcast, Partizan was on the agenda the day before. One group of students sits and chats, others kill time playing association, and others have fun playing cards. It's one of the students' birthday, and he goes from person to person handing out cookies. Posters and banners with a bloody fist were put up around the university. On the tables are books and scripts of those who use the blockade to study.

For days, the tabloids have been writing articles about debauched students who go wild on the roadblocks, have parties and throw trash wherever they can. When it comes to the Faculty of Political Sciences, members of student organizations who oppose the blockade took a similar position.

However, at the blockade, one gets a completely different impression. Yes, the energy among the students is positive, they play music and movies, play the guitar and organize various games - all with the aim of filling time and maintaining motivation to continue with the blockade.

The university is noisy, everything is bustling with life, but no one who sets foot in that place would call the students "anarchists", a term that has been used indiscriminately by the regime's media for days, with the intention of delegitimizing the protests. After all, people who huddle under the canopy to light a cigarette on a rainy night because they respect the rule against smoking inside the university, can hardly be labeled as causing chaos.

College at night

The night gives the college a completely different dimension - it becomes a strange, mystical, somewhat surreal place. The corridors are dark, many rooms are locked, and the habitable ones have been given a new purpose.

The amphitheater, the place where the most important and most attended lectures are held, was turned into a kind of storage room due to the low temperature. Behind the last row of chairs, the students placed unwrapped food, snacks, and chemical products - everything that would normally be found in a household's pantry or laundry room, is now neatly arranged in the faculty's amphitheater, for free use by anyone who is present at that moment. .

This is perhaps the biggest impression from the blockade. When all this is over and classes at the university start to be organized again, students will regularly go to exercises and lectures in the rooms on whose floors they once slept. It is twisted, in general, to think about how students will feel when they return to regular activities.

Is it possible to look at the university in the same way after you slept in its premises, brushed your teeth and made it a place to live? This question echoes in my head as I look up at the ceiling of one of the auditoriums from the hard floor.

Morning brings seriousness

As the morning slowly creeps into the corridors and auditoriums, the dose of mysticism disappears. The faculty, at least for a moment, becomes the old one again. The corridors are still lined with tables and chairs, where the early risers are already drinking their first morning coffee. In the daylight, new details are noticed - on the blackboard of the amphitheater, someone wrote in chalk that cigarettes and alcohol are not allowed at the university. Right next to it, words of support from students from other faculties. I recognize the sentence "It's philosophical with FPN".

When students talk about solidarity, it is not limited only to the feeling of community within one faculty, that is, to the support of the faculty to each other. Next to the door of the amphitheater there is a bag into which the corks for the mission "Handicap Cork" are separated. An invitation for voluntary blood donation is hung on the wall of the corridor.

After breakfast, the cleaning action begins and very quickly the traces of all-night socializing disappear. Not only that, but some of the things that haven't been working at the university for years are being fixed - a group of students started a work action to fix the mirrors in the men's toilet, over which stickers had been pasted for years, making them usable again.

There is no music in the morning. The next steps are being considered. If the night was set aside for fun and leisure, now there is seriousness in the air. How to proceed? Who is joining? Which faculty needs help?

As every day until then, a plenum is scheduled for 14 pm to decide on future steps. In the meantime, there is a shift - new faces appear, while some of the people who overslept at the university return to their homes. With the promise that, after they rested and refreshed themselves, they would come again.