OSPEK

These last three days my sister joins OSPEK (campus introducing and study orientation) for new students in IAIN Surabaya. It is when they are introduced to new environment different from what they have in intermediate school, namely to a more free educational atmosphere. In this new environment they’re free from many things they must do before.


Basically it is intended to make a campus life more familiar to them. But then the way the committees carry out makes some of its basic aim unclear, and in some ways against the core aim of it. What makes me write is while IAIN is a so-called Islamic educational institution there are some things possibly considered by some as ‘deviations’ from what it should be.

Last year when I was joining OSPEK, I experience many new things, some of which to the some extent are surprised. There was a presentation from a speaker spending time up to when afternoon prayer time will soon end. For most of us, new students at that time, it makes us irritated since IAIN is an Islamic institution.

Although it is not as terrible as what happened in IAIN Bandung years ago, when in OSPEK some of the committee did something considered insulting some vital Islamic symbols, there remain some actions not reflecting Islamic values, practice, and spirituality, such as when in gathering to eat the committee deliberately decide to make man and woman eating face to face, which by some of students is considered as embarrassing. Maybe it sounds like a fundamentalist voice, but what I want to say here is about freedom.

If one have a conviction, say, for instance, to make distance between man and woman—which for some Muslim it is important value to fulfill—but he/she is not able to do in such situation, what do you think should he/she do? Should he/she become stranger in his/her location. I don’t think so. I believe it’s going to be better if one keep participating in one’s daily life while continue to hold what one believe in, in this case, to make distance.

It’s a matter a choice I think. If one chooses to do whatever he thinks it’s better for him, no one is to forbid him, for everybody has his own choice. However when you have no room for choices you’d better do things you consider nearer to your ideal, like what’s happening in OSPEK and, to some degree, remains in day-to-day campus life where in some places a majority oppresses to make its value accepted.

It become more unacceptable in IAIN for it claims to be an Islamic institution but somehow, in some aspects, seems to be contradictive to the values Islam promotes, not only in visible things but also, more tragically, in ‘invisible area’ like corruption which is clearly against Islamic values.