Ashotyan disrupted the action?
The student protest scheduled to be held near Yerevan State University was cancelled today.
The action was going to be against the RA Government's resolution on reducing the spots for Master's and PhD degrees by right to postponement of military service. Organizers of the action were students of YSU Faculty of Physics. Some of them had met with RA Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan yesterday and the latter had promised them to not only not reduce the spots for Master's degrees for natural sciences, but increase them.
After the meeting with the minister, the students took back and their notice of holding an action from Yerevan municipality and are now waiting for the minister to fulfill his promise.
As to what the warrant for the promise was, 4th year Physics student Mushegh Rafaelyan said:
"Our demands were met. Our government has chosen a special strategy for developing the natural sciences. For that reason, before the government's resolution, we started an action a week ago. We believe that would have been a fully extreme measure and we couldn't say how it would develop."
One of the participants on the opponent wing of the action, coordinator of "Hayk" youth-student union of "Heritage" party, Physics student Daniel Ionnisyan exclaimed ironically: "Long live the government's strategy according to which even if the spots for Master's degrees are not reduced, there are only 2 spots for PhD degrees at the Physics Faculty."
The decisive session of the RA Government will be held on April 29.
The behavior of this group of students surprised other participants of the action who were standing near the YSU Physics Faculty in different locations. Not far from them were many police officers. As Daniel Ioannisyan told "A1+", he had tried to convince his fellow classmates to not deal with the minister, but..."I couldn't stop them alone, although I can't blame them either."
Students of other faculties had also expressed the desire to participate in the action, but the deans of YSU, according to him, made surprising statements.
"Some faculties announced that it was the smell of gas and others announced that they had sprayed a drug for cockroaches. What was surprising was that the smell had no impact on the professors, but only students and the professors demanded that they go home. The professors at Romance-Germanic Faculty took students to the genocide memorial. They probably mixed the schedule."
Daniel underlined that his group was not going to wait for the government's April 29 resolution and would present the municipality with a notice for a new action.
