PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) — Students yesterday forced a shut down of the University of the West Indies to demand better police security in the area just east of Trinidad’s capital where a student was critically stabbed more than a week ago.

Several hundred students locked campus gates and stood in front of them, preventing anyone from entering and prompting the university to cancel classes for the day, university principal Bhoendradatt Tewarie said. No one was arrested.

The principal met with students yesterday afternoon and agreed to lobby for more police patrols and to allow the students to take control of the university shuttle service, which students said they wanted to make more efficient.

The university has already been working on adding more campus lighting and emergency phone booths, Tewarie said.

The head of the student guild, Mobafa Baker, said students were pleased with the university’s response.

“We wanted to send a very clear and a very strong message,” said Baker, a graduate student in international relations.

Classes were expected to resume today at the university, which has 8,500 students and is located in St Augustine, about 15 miles (24 kilometres) east of the capital, Port-of-Spain, Tewarie said.

The protest came a little more than a week after a student from St Vincent and the Grenadines was stabbed in the chest during what police said was an apparent mugging attempt. The student was walking home from a pub just off campus in the early morning hours.

He was hospitalised in critical condition after the attack, but was yesterday in stable condition, and police said he would be released soon. There have been no arrests for the attack.