Students also demanded an end to the union ban and the right to start a politically independent newspaper. A military government banned the last student publication in 1974 and replaced it with official propaganda leaflets that soon ceased publication because nobody read them, says Birhanu Nega, a lecturer at the university. Students' political frustrations are compounded by life in overcrowded classrooms and decaying buildings in a country that desperately needs more educated professionals. In 1991, the government began admitting more university students in an effort to remedy the neglect of higher education by the Mengistu regime. The number of students at Addis Ababa University rose from less than 5,000 in 1990 to more than 19,000 last year, although no new facilities have been built.
Many students lack textbooks, and even notebooks.
The flight from the university of most of the academic talent means that almost 70 percent of the 850 faculty members have no graduate-level training. A member of the Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, a support organization for Ethiopian higher education, who requested anonymity, says ethnic politics has polarized teaching at Addis Ababa University to an extent that it has lost its original mission of charting the country's development strategy. After the education minister announced the new charter, all of the university's 19,000 students boycotted classes, although they continued to live in the dormitories. Students say the police tried to lure them into the streets by sending in plainclothes officers disguised as opposition activists. By refusing to leave the campus, Mr. Awoke says, the students deprived the police of any justification for an attack.