Students Chant ‘Get Lost Raisi’, As Iran’s President Visits University

Hundreds of students held a protest at Al-Zahra University -- a female-only public university – against Ebrahim Raisi while the president was speaking to his cherrypicked supporters inside a hall. 

Raisi visited the university on Saturday while anti-government protest rallies were being held on several campuses across the country. 

Al-Zahra University students, who were not allowed in the hall where Raisi was delivering a speech, gathered outside the venue and chanted slogans against Raisi and the clerical regime such as "Raisi, get lost." 

Iranian activists and university professors called for nationwide rallies on Saturday, October 8, as street protests have become sporadic in recent days. In a statement Thursday, professors at the prestigious Sharif University of Technology in Tehran also urged all students and professors to rally in universities across the country in protest to the plainclothes security forces’ brutal attack on their university’s students October 2.

By noon, videos on social media show police using tear gas near Sharif University, and gunshots are also heard around the university. 

Students, mostly girls, in secondary schools, which only opened a few days ago for the new academic year, rebelled this week in many areas, refusing to attend classes, protesting inside their schools and chanting slogans on their way home. Students often burn the headscarves they are forced to wear, in protest to hijab laws and the killing of Mahsa Amini who was arrested in September for her "improper hijab”.

Iranian authorities have clamped down on the protesters with such heavy methods that even some of their own supporters find it hard to digest.