Escalation of Pressure on Students: Eight Students Suspended at Iran University of Science and Technology

According to a report published by the Working Group for the Defense of Student Rights at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), at least six students have been sentenced to a one-semester suspension from study by the university's disciplinary committee in preliminary rulings.

Two other students at the same university have been verbally notified of a one-semester suspension without any written ruling being issued to them. Security and punitive pressures on students across various Iranian universities have intensified during the war involving the United States and Israel.

Some IUST students have faced written reprimands, and an even larger number remain blocked from accessing their Golestan portal despite the semester having concluded.

The Golestan portal is one of the primary and most comprehensive software systems for managing educational and student information in Iranian universities. Student sources state that the suspended students at IUST received these rulings without even a single defense hearing being held by the disciplinary committee.

According to these reports, IUST university officials acted extrajudicially and arbitrarily by receiving student defenses via email and, in many cases, proceeded to issue rulings without clearly explaining the charges or providing information regarding the contents of the case files.

Previously, student sources had reported that four students at Tehran's K. N. Toosi University of Technology had been suspended from their studies by disciplinary committee rulings. According to a report by the Islamic Association of Students at K. N. Toosi University, Hossein Mohammadi, a mathematics student admitted in 2022, and Seyed Mohammad Seyed Aboudi, an electrical engineering student admitted in 2022, were each sentenced to a two-semester suspension from study in preliminary disciplinary committee rulings.

Additionally, Alireza Jafari-Asar, a physics student admitted in 2021, was sentenced to a two-semester suspension, and Reza Salehi, a computer engineering student admitted in 2021, was sentenced to a one-semester suspension.

The student organization wrote that the reasons for creating these disciplinary files and the allegations brought against these students remain unclear. Seyed Aboudi had previously faced a ruling of a two-semester suspension and a permanent ban on student welfare services, but these rulings were overturned during the Ministry of Science's review stage.