In the last month, as the campaign season for student government has kicked into gear at Lebanon's universities, at least a dozen election-related fights have erupted in and around the nation's campuses. Students have been stabbed, accusations of unfairness hurled, and Lebanon's largest institution for higher learning, Lebanese University, has cancelled this year's vote in all 17 of its faculties.
 
An unusually tumultuous year for collegiate democracy? Not in Lebanon, where students are an important barometer of the nation's political landscape.
 
The importance of student elections in Lebanon reaches back to at least the civil war and the ensuing period of Syrian tutelage, when national electoral campaigns were widely seen as rigged affairs, and the universities provided one of the few outlets where the will of the people could be expressed in a reasonably democratic manner.  That significance didn't diminish with the Syrian withdrawal in 2005; if anything it accelerated.
 
A hint of just how tense and turbulent recent elections have been can be heard in the voices of university administrators, who every year must grapple with the specter of violence and charges of partisanship from losing candidates.
 
Take Dr. Maroun Kiserwani, dean of Student Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and the man officially responsible for organizing the university's student elections, which were held on Wednesday. He told NOW Lebanon in the days before the vote that while "the atmosphere in the university up till now has been good and devoid of tension, anything is still possible."
 
"Despite this positive atmosphere,” he added, “We have taken every precaution, especially regarding security."
 
From a distance, the environment he describes sounds less like the country's most prestigious university than like a warzone in the midst of a brief lull in fighting – which, of course, isn't that far from reality, given that in the time since AUB's last elections in January, the neighborhood surrounding the university has witnessed gun battles and armed occupation — by groups that are represented in student government.
 
But even in a country where seemingly no election is too obscure — witness the recent Dentists Syndicate's elections — to be covered in the press and analyzed as a potential bellwether for the nation's political direction, AUB's stand out. Dr. Kiserwani, who has been affiliated with university since 1972, said that for as long as he can remember, student elections have been highly partisan affairs that mirror the country's larger political dynamic.
 
AUB’s prestigious reputation, history of educating national leaders – one third of the current cabinet along with the prime minister are alumni – and diverse student body composed of members from all Lebanon's sects along with students from around the world, mean that voting at AUB is seen by Lebanon's political parties as the most prized of the myriad hotly contested nongovernmental races.

One student coordinator told NOW Lebanon that "the elections are the most sensitive in Lebanon because they really are representative of Lebanese demographics to a large degree.”

It is no surprise then that student supporters of the country's leading parties have put in an astonishing amount of electoral work that rivals that of the national elections.

But Bassil Naaman, a second-year economics major, said his March 14-aligned group, the PYO, had opted to not field any candidates this election, and was instead focusing exclusively on campaigning for others. Namaan, who was elected to the higher body of AUB’s student council as a sophomore, said that, like his party, he wanted to experience the election from another angle, as campaigner rather than as a candidate, and he proceeded to describe an extensive get-out-the-vote operation, replete with enthusiastic field work and peer-to-peer networking.

Naaman was, like most March 14 supporters, wearing a yellow vest and t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Students at Work” below what looks like the logo of a certain Party of God. “We wanted to put the same symbol but instead of an AK-47 have the guy holding a pen, which characterizes our preference for education over gun. We saw what happened with the May events, and people lost their lives, and now people don’t even remember who they are. We want to remind them, but we also want to say that we’re about working and making the school a better place.”
 
Mohammad Hassane, an official from the university branch of Amal, told NOW Lebanon before the polls were taken that his movement had "been preparing for the elections for about three months…We are doing a campaign with all parties of the opposition, including the names of all our candidates, and we have seen a period of coordination between ourselves and our allies in order to achieve our goal."
 
All this for what?

The hyper-politicization of student elections in Lebanon is underlined by the fact that for all the hours of campaign work and money spent, it isn't clear that Lebanese student governments are anymore powerful, or invested with any greater authority, than is found at universities elsewhere in the world, where campaigns for student government tend to be more about quirky Xeroxed posters and resume-building than national politics.
 
Indeed, some at AUB argue that the politicization of student government makes it less effective.
 
Becky Katz, an American graduate student at AUB, who until Tuesday was a candidate for election among international students and has participated in student elections in the States, said that while it's understandable "given the dense and highly charged political environment that student activists want to begin playing a role, the student government is polarized by these parties and as a result is paralyzed… Students are unable to organize collectively and efficiently to advocate on their own behalf and improve student life."
 
"The initiatives of one party tend to be turned down by another just because of the national political divide," Katz added. "There's less of an emphasis on platform and more of an emphasis on simply which Lebanese party you side with."
 
She said the political divide created by student candidates who represent national parties also "creates problems after the elections, breeding an atmosphere of hostility and hindering the capacity of students to work together."
 
Mayhem at AUB

On Wednesday, Election Day, as students filed through a gauntlet of candidates and campaigners to cast their votes in AUB’s West Hall, Tarek Abdulrahman, leaning over a portable barrier by the entrance, was making a spirited grab for last-minute support, yelling “Junior independent” at the top of his lungs and furiously handing out election flyers. Despite his evident enthusiasm, when asked what he thought of the process, Abdulrahman, a student of Palestinian descent, didn’t hesitate. "I totally hate the whole thing. I hate how people fool each other. I hate how people hate each other. I hate how the politics outside the walls of the university divides the students inside.”
 
That divide was palpable later that day as students waited for election results on either side of West Hall. In front of the main stairs, security officers cordoned off a no-man’s land, where two large screens were erected so that the two enormous and opposed crowds – March 14 on the right and March 8 on the left — could watch the results without mingling or, importantly, fighting. It was a festive but intense atmosphere, as the boisterous and sharply bifurcated student body surged back and forth as the results filtered out of the hall.

As of press time, March 14-alligned parties had taken 50 seats, while March 8 took 34, the rest going to independent parties, and five requiring a recount.
 
Not the craziest around

If AUB’s elections tend to be the most heavily anticipated, they aren’t necessarily the most intense, or, even in final calculation, the most politically significant.
 
Two weeks ago Notre Dame University in Zouk held its first student elections since 2005.  Given that the student body is overwhelmingly Christian, and that Christians are the most politically divided of Lebanon’s sects, it is perhaps not surprising that national politicians rushed to comment of the outcome of the vote.
 
The polls, which were covered by every news program in the country, and generated no fewer than six tickers on this website, were seen as a test of how well March 14-aligned Christians would fare in next year's parliamentary elections. The country's leading Christian politicians made no effort to feign disinterest, congratulating or condemning the outcome of the vote depending on how well student candidates affiliated with their party did.
 
When the March 14 students swept the vote, ending the campus dominance of the FPM, Samir Geagea and Amin Gemayel, the leaders of March 14's two main Christian parties, personally met with their student supporters and hailed the victory, in the words of Gemayel, as "a special and definitive message as to what the Lebanese youth want: They seek a free Lebanon, that follows the Cedar Revolution."
 
However, the gap between the two sides was markedly more pronounced at NDU than at AUB two weeks later. The university was abuzz with electoral energy, with hundreds of students in their parties’ colored shirts engaging in a frenetic effort to get out the vote. The red shirts of the March 14-aligned students outnumbered the orange ones worn by FPM supporters, and, judging by each lists’ headquarters, the March 14 students seemed to hold the clear advantage in organization and enthusiasm.
 
Judging by the electric campaigns and tremendous turnout at both AUB and NDU, democracy is very much alive in Lebanon, and the results are as mixed as can be expected from, to paraphrase an over-quoted British prime minister, the worst form of government except for all the other forms ever tried.