Military help IPDN discipline students

Forty military personnel from the Siliwangi Military District Command have been hired to assist the Institute of Public Administration (IPDN) in Jatinangor, Sumedang, in West Java to discipline and supervise its students.

Rector I Nyoman Sumaryadi said the decision to involve military personnel was the initiative of former home minister Mardiyanto over the belief that lack of supervising had led to violent acts on campus.

The initiative began three months ago. The IPDN, which currently has 3,962 students, made headlines in 2003 over a series of crimes committed by its senior students including violence that led to the deaths of a number of junior students as well as drug use and pornography.

The violence did not stop despite the perpetrators being sent to jail. The latest incident occurred in April 2007 with the death of student Cliff Muntu. In 2009, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued a presidential decree, which among others restored IPDN’s function as an administrative academic education institution, banned contacts between senior and junior students by liquidating all extra-curricular activities and established the IPDN in regions to cease violence.

“[Military personnel] are supervising education while helping create an orderly and secure situation,” Sumaryadi said. “They have to follow the regulation here, no longer under the Army’s command.”

Military personnel are paid Rp 1.2 million (US$120) monthly plus Rp 600,000 for living costs. They are given the authority to directly warn students and work together with the 160 supervisors and 330-strong security unit to monitor the students.

To help minimize vested interests with the students, military personnel are replaced on a monthly basis by their superior in the Army.

Separately, Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi expressed hope IPDN graduates could fill in the posts for professional bureaucrats in regional administrations.

He said the 1,500 IPDN graduates per year could fill at least three professional civil servant posts in 524 autonomous regions across the country. Currently it has 15,421 graduates serving as civil servants across the country.