Tag Archives: AUB

MP Samy Gemayel Supports the Metel Ma Shelta Campaign

Behold, Samy Gemayel has supported the Metel Ma Shelta anti-littering campaign, which I blogged about a few days ago:

Moreover, LBC News has also written about the campaign on their website.

I’m very glad the campaign is gaining traction. The number of likes for the Facebook page, as of the time of writing this post, has exceeded 1900. Here’s hoping the support of Samy Gemayel, and hopefully other MPs soon, results in the formulation of a much needed law to help keep our streets clean.

You might be interested in checking out their teaser video as well:

This campaign is shaping up to be quite big. Hopefully the circumstances help it assume its full potential.

Metel Ma Shelta – A Lebanese Anti-Littering Campaign by AUB Graphic Design Students

Meet Nadine Razzouk, or as I like to call her Nado.

Nado is one of the first people I ever met at AUB. She’s also one the quirkiest and most charmingly happy human beings you can ever encounter. Nado is also a graphic design student, soon to graduate and grace the world with her impeccable talents and keen eye for details.

Nado & Mohamed Olaymi & Lama Shehadeh, three brilliant graphic designers, sat together and managed to come up with an ingenious idea to fight littering in Lebanon. If you’re anything like me in that regard, you get infuriated whenever you see – for lack of a better word – shitheads throwing used tissues, coke cans, cigarette boxes, etc… on Lebanon’s streets and not giving a second look as to what they left behind.

I remember when I had French friends over a few years back. Their main comments regarding Lebanon can be summed up in one sentence: “One of the most gorgeous countries. But it’s also very dirty.”

And I can’t agree more. If you ever drove around slowly, you can’t but notice the sidewalks, the sides of the roads, the highways… everything is just filled with litter. And people seem not to care that they live in filth.

Here comes a team of AUB graphic designers and their idea: Metel Ma Shelta.

The campaign’s description is as follows:

As we were strolling around the beautiful streets of Hamra, we witness a man pulling his arm outside the window of his car to throw a tissue paper. What upset us the most was that this was happening across Lebanon and we weren’t able to do anything about it.We, as graphic designers decided to use what we’re best at (our witty minds and shiny tools) to visually express our frustration regarding the littering issue in Lebanon.Since people nowadays are immune to flyers, we thought of creating something irresistible that no one can overlook. Mmmm, so what can be irresistible to every individual on this planet…That’s when it hit us like a lightning bolt!
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!We photographed lebanese money and slightly altered the colors and design so that this project won’t be mistaken for forgery (something that was holding us back from going through with this campaign).

We’re well aware that many campaigns have been done regarding this issue, but if Metel Ma Shelta reaches out to at least 1 individual, we’ll be more than glad to have helped somewhere somehow.

Now lets clean Lebanon 10 thou at a time 🙂

The arabic on the right translates to: Similarly to how you picked this up, you can pick up the litter off the street

I wish them the best of luck in their campaign and I hope it becomes very successful and gains enough traction to hopefully pass an anti-littering law that would punish those who litter by getting them to pay ridiculous amounts of money.

Let’s keep Lebanon clean. We owe it at least that much. This is their Facebook page.

AUB Elections: Vote Students At Work

You know what baffles me about pro-Hezbollah (and affiliates) people attending AUB? They tend to forget that it’s the AMERICAN University of Beirut.

All they do is go there and bash the American system left and right, totally ignoring that they are in the midst of what they’re criticizing. I guess the Lebanese proverb: “2e3ed b7edno w bientof bida2no” applies here. And you know what’s even sadder? The Aounists that join Hezbollah, SSNP and other political parties in their chants against the “American devil.” You’d think they would know better than to be this brainwashed.

Let’s get one thing straight: as an AUB student who graduated back in 2010, I voted three times in my university’s elections and was almost nominated twice with Students at Work. I have every reason not to want to support them but my reasons are personal and not as relevant to the greater picture. But here’s what you need to know: the amount of work any student body would put into enhancing your student life is minimal. But at least with Students at Work, you know they will actually attempt to do something and not live in the orgasm of their victory for a whole year straight.

The independents didn’t do anything as well the year they won via a political play with March 8th people, which happened to be during my junior year. Students at Work needed one more seat in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences back then, one they had relinquished in my year to leave an open list. Their list would have won if it had been fully closed.

With Students at Work, you’ll know that AUB’s Main Gate will not turn into a shouting fest where a slogan calling for the death of a major Lebanese leader is chanted and celebrating the assassination of one of our country’s most inspiring presidents. With Students at Work, Main Gate will not turn into this.

So come Wednesday and you’re standing in front of a ballot, thinking about who you need to vote for, remember that you are at the American University of Beirut because you and your parents believe this is the best education that can be provided in Lebanon today. Remember that the level of the university you’re in is not the way it is because of people whose daily habits have hypocrisy written all over them and remember that your future endeavors, soon after finishing your degree, will not take you to Iran. You’ll be going to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and France. Don’t be a hypocrite. Vote Students at Work. It may not change your scholastic life but at least you’ll know you’re voting with the air of freedom of the institute that is providing your future.

The Allure Of Free

There’s a response that is, I believe, inherent to human nature, transcending boundaries – almost unanimous. And it is the response to something that is free.

If I tell you I’m willing to give you something for free, what would be the first thing that comes to your head? Yes, there it is… “What’s the catch?” And what do you do? You don’t take the thing.

My cousin was telling me earlier today about her dilemma in Australia. She works at a leading TV station and is often given tickets to movie premieres. We’re talking about the star-studded events, involving red carpets and bling, not the excitement we feel when we watch the first screening of a movie on its release day. And more often than not, she can’t go to those premieres so she usually asks around if someone wants those tickets, only discovering that giving this tickets away for nothing is harder than her actual job.

And it happened to me when I was at AUB outdoors. There was some guy offering free hugs and the moment I saw him, the second idea the crossed my mind (the first one being how weird it was) was that there was definitely a catch somehow in those hugs.

But why do we have such a response to free stuff? Why is it that most people would take the premiere tickets from my cousin if she had asked for an insignificant amount of money but refrain from doing so if she was handing them for nothing in return?

Our mentality is apparently wired to go away from things that are too good to be true. Even for things that are not totally free. If you find a bargain online, you are as skeptical.
But in the world of today, do not underestimate the power of “free.” I am most definitely not an economy expert but with most things getting cheaper and cheaper because of competition, offering things for free has become a way for some companies to topple others. Offering things for free is also a way for those companies to introduce services.

When I started buying stuff off amazon, I was offered a free trial of “amazon prime” in their attempt to hook me on speedier deliveries. And if I had been living in the US, I would have totally gone for it. Amazon redid a similar thing with Lady Gaga’s latest album: they sold the mp3 version for $0.99 along with a free trial of their newly introduced “cloud” service, as a way to get ahead of Apple before they introduce their own version of cloud services, probably later this year.

According to Chris Anderson, “free” is the future of prices. He wrote his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price on a $250 netbook, running a free version of Linux, free Google Docs, which offer him free backup and on-the-go access and then he offered the work for free on iTunes. He argues that billion dollar industries are being formed today around the price of “zero dollars and zero cents.” And if you think about it, isn’t Google one of the leading companies in the world today and it gives almost everything for free? So don’t freak out when you’re offered something for free. Odds are, someone, somewhere, is making money off of it somehow – with no catch to you.

AUB Purposefully Losing Its Identity

Whenever you recite the following Bible verse: “that they may have life and have it abundantly” in Lebanon, the first thing that comes to a person’s mind is the country’s most prestigious educational facility: the American University Of Beirut.

The moment you walk into AUB’s campus, you are striken by how different it is from the city in which it is found. It’s a piece of land inside Beirut where buildings are, unlike their Beiruti counterparts, being preserved, where trees grow freely (and where cats roam without being disturbed). College Hall, the building that first welcomes you when you enter through AUB’s Main Gate was totally destroyed in a bombing that targeted it in the 1990s. However, the university rebuilt it exactly as it was. AUB was an example of cherishing legacy in a country that is running away from its past as fast as it could do so.

Next to College Hall is a building that looks like a chapel. It has the Protestant architecture of a chapel. It even has an Organ inside. And to make its original purpose even less inconspicuous, it has a Cross on its roof. However, what used to be a church was transformed into what is today AUB’s Assembly Hall – a place where students gather for commencement, concerts, etc…

The change that “Assembly Hall” faced was considered as the ultimate change in the face of AUB, previously known as the Syrian Protestant College, which was founded in 1866 by American missionaries Daniel Bliss and Henry Jesup.

AUB today is a secular campus in a country that is striving to attain a secular situation. It is a place where people from all sects and religions can attend and expect to obtain the best level of education that Lebanon has to offer – and that is a great amount. However, no one expected the decision taken by the AUB administration to change the university’s most famous slogan into one that does not have any religious affiliation.

Yes, the verse “that they may have life and have it more abundantly” will apparently be changed into some other phrase, as part of the university’s new marketing campaign – to “better the university image”.

The questions beg themselves. Does the AUB administration think the current reputation AUB has cannot withstand the fact that its founders chose a very poignant Bible verse to anoint the university with? Do they really think AUB benefits from anything that takes away of its 150 years of history, let alone a meaningless campaign to attract more students, one that will be forgotten in a few months? And do they really think that the current AUB image is improved by changing the verse that is written on its Main Gate as a way to tell all the ultimate purpose of attending the university?

AUB is slowly eating away at what makes it a special beacon in Lebanon and the Middle East. AUB used to be a revolutionary facility where scholastic evolution merged with a sense of historical belonging. It looks like the strings of this sense of belonging are being slowly chipped away by the lure of more dollars flowing in to an already overflown treasury.

You’d think what has already taken place at AUB regarding the separation of religion from the university is enough. The steps taking place today can be described as a form of administrative theophobia.

The improvement of AUB’s image does not start by removing the phrase that would make any AUB student proud to hear. It starts by improving the university programs to a point where they can compete better with universities abroad. It starts with giving us better labs, where we can stretch our wings a little outside the tiny boxes in which we are bound by professors whose knowledge in their courses has been hampered by their sense of megalomania and it starts by getting down from the high-horse this administration has fabricated around itself and realizing that, if AUB continues on the path it’s on, the only way to go is down.