17 November 2003…  exactly 30 years later

People have been asking us:  "Hey guys, you announced your Resistance on November 17, 2003.  Was that a coincidence?".  Well, here is the "behind-the-scenes" story of how it all started.

It was the evening of 13^th or 14^th of November and Garen Karapetyan was chatting with his friend/classmate Haig Nazarian.  Having read and followed some postings in discussions from various internet forums , we got very concerned and a bit depressed.  October and the start of November was a sad and disheartening period: every body was talking about it (more like, "moaning" about it) and everybody was saying we should do this and we should do that - but nobody was actually doing anything.  At that time we needed something to raise the Melkoniantsi spirit, to give hope and to mobilise the Melkoniantsis for an action with effective thrust.  There was no focal point to unite all those interested in the future of the school.

  What could better fulfill that task in communication age then a dynamic website?  So immediately that evening we two started making the first drafts of the website.  Garen was writing the texts (since he's the political scientist) and Haig was putting it up (since he's a professional IT manager and web-designer), so we were making it between the two of us for the first few hours: Garen from Wales, and Haik from Armenia.

It was a depressing period cause everybody was just talking and talking bla-bla-bla and there was only one guy who said “stop talking, lets actually DO something” and he posted his telephone on the web.  So I gave him a call that evening – it was Souren Sarafyan in Reading (UK).   Within minutes Souren bought the domain name, and dedicated his personal webspace, and we agreed that we three are going to be organised non-hierarchically – like a circle.

We were working on the same thing from 3 remote locations communicating at the same time over the phone and chat-lines.  After 2-3 days and nights with almost no sleep and a furious Melkoniantsi blood loaded with caffeine, adrenaline and nicotine, the earliest version of the website was ready on 16 of November.  We had to work fast cause every hour was valuable: AGBU's plan, at the time, was to announce the closure of MEI on December 10 -- so we had 3-4 weeks left.  Garen then compiled a very raw list of whatever e-mails that he could find from his old website from www.angelfire.com/ar/melkonian and from here-&-there (many of them were outdated and immediately bounced back).  We were all set by 16/11/03, though there were still small malfunctionings to correct, but Garen insisted that we wait few more hours before sending the global e-mail so that it goes out on 17 November. And so in the earliest hours of 17 November 2003 a global e-mail went out announcing the alumni Resistance.  

17 of November to us is not the terrorist group, but one of the most beautiful and fascinating stories of what student culture can achieve, and how it can topple oppressive regimes, and how it can demand the impossible despite all odds - and still achieve a victory.  The parallels are all there: there is an oppressive dictatorial institution being resisted by former and current students.  Exactly 30 years after November 17, 1973, Armenians have their own "Theka-efta Noevri" .

It should be said, however that we do not share the same views as the group that was established on 17 Nov 1975.  On some points we are at odds with Trokskism. We are neither Nationalist Socialists, nor are we Communists (in strict definition), though as one reads through this website, one might sense some strong socialist undertones in one way or another.  Obviously, the issue of MEI closure is only a tip of the iceberg, and it would be a mistake to treat it as something separate from a grander problem haunting the whole planet today.

Anybody who has studied in Cyprus, whether from Brazil or Ethiopia or America knows exactly what 17 of November stands for.      

"We have scarcely began to make you understand that we do not intend to play the game"