Students from at least a dozen universities across Iran have issued statements of solidarity with their peers protesting at Tehran's Art University as anger builds over the increased enforcement of dress codes on campuses across the country.
Protests at the Art University escalated last week following the educational institution's insistence on making the Maghna'eh -- a black cloth covering their head, forehead, chin, and chest -- mandatory for female students. Students staged a sit-in at the university's National Garden campus, which was met with violence from security forces.
On June 17, special forces and plainclothes security personnel once again attacked the students at the entrance to the National Garden campus, violently arresting more than 10 male and female scholars and transporting them to an undisclosed location.
In a statement expressing solidarity with the Art University protesters, students from Tehran University's Faculty of Fine Arts, said "the aggressive and reckless actions of the security forces and the blows inflicted on the bodies of art students and other student groups, on a larger scale, are damaging to society and will provoke a direct response from the artistic and academic community."
They described the Art University administrators' actions as a "previously failed policy" and told government officials, to "remember your previous failed experiences and make a mirror of admonition because we students have joined hands and will not be silent."
The Art University has made several attempts to make the Maghna'eh mandatory for students over the past decade, but the move has been met with resistance from students. The resentment over the policy has grown after months of unrest -- led by students and women around Iran -- sparked by the death in September of Mahsa Amini while in police custody over a head-scarf violation.
Students from the K. N. Toosi University of Technology said in a separate statement that "the era of student submission to oppression has ended."
"What every oppressive power fears has happened to you, and the student can no longer be a submissive creature, because they are inherently free-thinking and freedom-loving," they added in the statement address to school administrators.
"The history of the student movement has shown that intimidation, suspensions, exiles, arrests, and killings do not weaken the unity and resistance of students...A single scratch on the body of an art student is enough to make students across the country overflow with anger and rage and pour into the streets," they warned.
In a statement titled "Woman, Life, Freedom," students from the University of Rehabilitation Sciences said the protest of art students "is nothing but the beautiful art of courage, resistance to oppression and the oppressor."
Student bodies from several other schools expressed similar sentiments in statements they issued on the subject as well.
Following the recent nationwide protests, pressure has increased on universities across the country to enforce the mandatory hijab policy.
The crackdown on students has seen them quickly summoned and issued "expulsion" or "suspension from studies" orders for any form of protest action, noncompliance with the dress code, or participation in any form of gathering or protest action.
Sepideh Rashno, a young woman who was arrested and tortured three months ago for protesting the mandatory hijab, or head scarf, following Amini's death, was suspended recently from Alzahra University for two semesters, including the current one, for "not observing the Islamic dress code."
Universities and students have long been at the forefront of the struggle for greater social and political freedoms in Iran. In 1999, students protested the closure of a reformist daily, prompting a brutal raid on the dorms of Tehran University that left one student dead.
Over the years, the authorities have arrested student activists and leaders, sentencing them to prison and banning them from studying.
The activist HRANA news agency says that at least 700 university students have been arrested during the recent unrest.
Many have faced sentences such as imprisonment, flogging, and dozens of students have been expelled from universities or suspended from their studies, as security forces try to stifle widespread dissent.