Senegalese university students say death of protester dashes hope for change

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Thousands of students left Senegal’s top public university Tuesday after authorities closed campus housing following a student’s death during protests over unpaid financial aid.

Abdoulaye Ba, a second-year medical student, died during protests at Cheikh Anta Diop University in the capital Dakar, authorities said.

Burned cars and broken barricades still littered the university grounds on Tuesday following clashes a day before between the police and students. A video posted on social media Monday night shows flames and smoke coming from a four-story student housing building as students try to flee, some jumping from windows.

Ba died in a nearby hospital from severe head injuries, according to Cheilh Atab Sagne, president of the Student Association of the Faculty of Medicine, Pharmacy and Dentistry. He said Ba did not participate in the protests but was severely beaten by the police in his room. Several other students repeated the allegation.

Senegal’s university calendar has been repeatedly disrupted for several years by prolonged closures following periods of unrest, sometimes lasting more than nine months and causing academic years to overlap. Students often go months without receiving stipends averaging about 40,000 CFA francs ($73) per month, which is the only source of income for many of them.

The Senegalese government said in a statement Monday that “serious events” led to the student’s death without providing details.

Minister of the Interior Mouhamadou Bamba Cissé on Tuesday promised an inquiry and expressed his condolences to Ba’s family while unverified video of a student throwing a cocktail Molotov played on a screen near him.

“On the ground, there were acts of violence observed on both sides, including acts that were seen coming from the defense and security forces,” Cissé said during a news conference.

Amnesty International Senegal and several rights group denounced a “disproportionate use of force by police” at the university in a joint statement Tuesday.

Students at Cheikh Anta Diop University, one of the largest in West Africa with around 80,000 students, began protesting in early December over unpaid stipends. Student anger increased when university authorities closed campus cafeterias after students refused to pay for meals, which are often paid for using food stamps

Senegal’s prolonged economic difficulties have deepened the daily struggles of many people, with young Senegalese among the hardest hit. About 75% of the country's population is under 35.

The unpaid stipends are mainly due to delays in the academic calendar following several university closures of in recent years following protests in support of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, which caused disruptions in payment schedules.

Promises by Sonko and President Bassirou Diomaye Faye to tackle corruption and improve management of natural resources raised the hopes of many young Senegalese.

When Sonko was arrested in 2021 and later barred from running in the country's 2024 presidential election, massive protests erupted at Cheikh Anta Diop University, leading to violent clashes with security forces that left at least 65 people dead, according to rights groups.

A reform agenda put forth by a new government, which took office in April 2024, has quickly run into obstacles.

A 2025 government audit revealed a larger-than-reported debt inherited from the previous administration. Talks with the International Monetary Fund over a new financial program have stalled as public frustration grows and the nation's fiscal outlook worsens.

Khadija Ndiaye, a second-year history student, said she has not received a stipend for three months. But the 19-year-old considered herself lucky compared with some of her peers who haven’t received stipends in almost a year.

Ndiaye was a staunch supporter of Sonko but now feels betrayed by the government response to the student mobilization.

“We were just kids, but we were fighting for him, I can’t believe he is doing this to us today,” Ndiaye said. “He said in his campaign videos that a student can no longer survive without a stipend. It is not normal today for him to stand before us and say that a student can survive without a stipend; it is contradictory.”

Ndiaye said the government seems disconnected from the realities and grievances of the students.

“Their kids are not even in Senegal, there in the United States, Europe, anywhere,” she said. “You’re never going to see the son of a minister or a president here at the university.”

Ibrahima Diatta, a 23-year-old literature student, said the stipends are “de facto salaries” for students, with many relying on them to support their families. Like many students, Diatta moved to the capital from the countryside for his studies and is one of his family’s main breadwinners.

Diatta also has lost faith in the national leadership, including Sonko.

“Sonko and Faye were chosen by the youth who protested, and now they have done the same thing to us that their predecessor did,” Diatta said. “I think this serves as a lesson for us young people that we have to wake up to the fact that nobody is coming to save us.”

David Célestin Faye, secretary-general of Senegal’s main university professors’ union, told The Associated Press that the extended closures in recent years caused delays in the academic year and issues with stipends, which ultimately contributed to the student’s death.

By closing student housing late Monday, which forced many students to leave the capital and return to the countryside, the authorities are repeating the same mistakes that led to delays in the academic calendar and caused the unpaid stipends, Faye said.

“Senegal has decided to grant stipends to all students. It must take responsibility for that choice. Students are not a burden, they are an investment that must be supported,” he said.

Students carry their belongings as they leave the Cheikh Anta Diop University, which is being evacuated following the death of second year student Abdoulaye Ba, in Dakar Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

A porter loads a suitcase onto a bus departing for the outskirts of Dakar at the Cheikh Anta Diop University, which is being evacuated following the death of second year student Abdoulaye Ba, in Dakar Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

A student transports his belongings on a motorcycle taxi as he leaves the Cheikh Anta Diop University, which is being evacuated following the death of second year student Abdoulaye Ba, in Dakar Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

A student transports his belongings on a motorcycle taxi as he leaves the Cheikh Anta Diop University, which is being evacuated following the death of second year student Abdoulaye Ba, in Dakar Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Students carry their belongings as they leave the Cheikh Anta Diop University, which is being evacuated following the death of second year student Abdoulaye Ba, in Dakar Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Eileen Gu isn't trying to sound zen about all this. It just sort of comes out that way.

There is something inherently dangerous about flinging yourself down the side of a mountain or soaring over snow and ice, yet don't describe what Gu and hundreds of other Winter Olympians who are exposing themselves to the unpredictable whims of the elements across northern Italy as a battle.

It's more like a dance.

“There’s a big part of it where you feel like you’re integrating with nature and also surpassing the capacity of mankind at the same time,” Gu said. “It’s a very enlightened experience in a way.”

One that separates the Winter Games from its summer counterpart, too. Sure, the weather plays a factor in what happens inside the Olympic stadium during track and field or how open-water swimming and surfing play out. And there's nowhere to hide for marathoners running 26.2 miles through the streets of whatever metropolis they might find themselves every four years.

Yet running, throwing and jumping in an organized way have been around since the Greeks were doing it a few millennia ago. They're easily accessible. Just go outside — the backyard, the local park, the nearby trail — and boom, you're there.

Winter itself is more forbidding, with its snow and its ice and its subzero wind chill. Going outside in that is a choice. Competing in the sports of the season, be they classic (like downhill skiing) or otherwise (looking at you, slopestyle snowboarders), demands a bit of wanderlust, a willingness to meet nature where it is on a given day while exploring just how far your courage, skills and imagination might take you.

In some ways, the events at the Winter Olympics feel like a series of dares. Go 80 mph (130 kph) or more down an icy slope. Spin around three times on a snowboard and add a flip or two if you feel like it. Contort your body around a series of gates placed impossibly close together.

Before Gu and American skiing great Mikaela Shiffrin and all the rest ever got here, however, they were just kids drawn in their own way to being outside in the cold.

For Emily Harrop, it began while camping with her father in the French Alps, a love affair that brought Harrop to her first Olympics, where her discipline of choice — ski mountaineering — will make its debut under the rings in a few days.

“(It's) where I feel that my heart just beats stronger,” Harrop said. “My soul feels just fulfilled when I’m doing anything where I feel kind of animal-like. You feel like you reconnect to an instinctive way of movement."

Instincts that are often aided by technology, particularly in a competitive environment on a course where the conditions can change minute to minute. Listen to Shiffrin talk about her process she she sounds as much like an engineer as she does the most decorated racer of all time.

While she allows “there is some magic in the mystery,” there is also a science to it when the clock is running and a medal is on the line.

“There's so many variables,” Shiffrin said. “You’ve got weather. You’ve got snow conditions. The course conditions are deteriorating even throughout the course of a race, from bib one to bib seven to bib 18 to bib 50 ... and you have to be flexible in that.”

Knowledgeable too.

Gu recently spent two hours fixated on how she planned to gear her skis to cope with the moisture of the snow that's specific to the halfpipe, big air and slopestyle courses in Livigno. Different moisture creates different suction, just one item on the laundry list of things that ran through her head during her brainstorming session.

What about the sunlight? What if it's cloudy? What about the wind, which Gu says “can break hearts." For Gu, it also doubles as a metronome vital to the way the 22-year-old goes about her business when she drops in.

“The tempo of the wind in my ears helps me to visualize and understand the pace of the trick,” said Gu, who opened her Olympics with a silver medal in slopestyle. “That’s also a way to connect with the outdoors.”

It is connection that is constantly being refined as technology develops, which Shiffrin believes helps her feel a bit of control over something she knows is so often uncontrollable. She and her team will pore over video following training runs, huddling for a quick debrief that can include consulting a GPS device to analyze everything from force to load to body capacity.

Then she will hop on the chairlift back to the top with a plan designed to find the fractions of a second that often serve as the separator between dreams and disappointment. Shiffrin likened it to a puzzle, albeit one where the borders are ever-changing.

Try to shove one piece into place when it doesn't quite fit, and you're in trouble. Show too much deference and you'll find yourself near the bottom of the standings looking up.

“You have to basically just go communicate with the mountain and feel like you’re using gravity to your advantage,” Shiffrin said. "You can’t try too hard. You just have to try hard enough. It’s just a beautiful balance that I find really, I don’t know. It just keeps me coming back.”

It also goes beyond that. There is something basic about feeling the sun on your face. The crisp air. A quiet that can make the rest of the world seem blissfully far away.

That quiet manifests itself in different ways for different athletes. During a recent trip back home to Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise, Harrop retreated into the range she described as her “back garden.”

There, with her parents at her side, Harrop soaked in the colors and felt “whole.”

However it goes in Harrop's Olympic debut — however it goes throughout her career, really — the sense of peace that drew her to doing this in the first place will remain.

“The mountains will always be there,” she said. "And I’ll always be able to go and have these little adventures.”

The adventures are a little bigger, a little bolder at the 2026 Games. Adventures that can also turn the cliched battle of “man vs. nature” on its head and turning it into something deeper and more meaningful.

“There are two parts of this," Gu said. "One is pushing the human limit, right? Human boundary. Doing things that are quite literally at the edge of what is physically possible. When you're the world's first to do something, that's really special. And the other part of it ... is this oneness with nature.”

AP National Writer Eddie Pells and AP Sports Writer Pat Graham contributed to this report.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-

Philipp Raimund, of Germany, soars through the air during his final round jump in the ski jumping men's normal hill individual at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Predazzo, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

France's Maxence Muzaton speeds down the course of an alpine ski men's downhill portion of a team combined race, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Bormio, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)

Finland's Elian Lehto is silhouetted as he speeds down the course of an alpine ski men's downhill portion of a team combined race, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Bormio, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

China's Eileen Gu practices before the women's freestyle skiing slopestyle qualifications at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

China's Eileen Gu celebrates after her score during the women's freestyle skiing slopestyle finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)