WEDNESDAY'S raid by students and teachers on the Punjab Assembly sent out different messages to different people. To those who measure general security on the basis of the security available to our lawmakers, the charge was a shocker. How could the police allow a smallish group to penetrate the safety cordon and come close to striking at the lawmakers? To another set of observers, though, the most remarkable aspect to the episode was the violence with which the police eventually blocked the protesters. The protesters were also not averse to a fistfight or two or to burning down a few vehicles, but the police action most certainly betrayed the guilt of a force that had reacted late and which then over-compensated for the delay in typically brutal manner.

The protest conveyed at least one more message, and loudly. This demonstration against autonomy to 26 select Punjab coll- eges was an out and out Jamaat-i-Islami show. Islami Jamiat Tulaba, the students' body allied with the Jamaat, was the only one allowed to prosper while a ban was long placed on student unions and they are the only ones visibly upset with the changes unfolding in the educational system in the province now. These changes are far too many involving, for instance, controversial decisions such as a shift from the current two-year bachelors' programme to a four-year BA honours degree. We haven't quite heard what non-Jamaatis have to say on the subject simply because such an entity doesn't formally exist on the campuses. The promise of revival of the students union Prime Minister Gilani had made in his inaugural speech in March 2008 is still unfulfilled. Consequently, there are no organisations around to either join the IJT in this quest or to oppose it. Their opposition to or support of the IJT here could have helped greatly in rationalising the issue and in seeing it as a real problem of the students at large. In the event, the current protest against autonomy for colleges is liable to be seen as a campaign by a body that shuns any and all changes on the campus by an administration it is not fond of.