Last March 6, CEU hosted the lecture ‘Student Unionism in a Changing Higher Education Landscape’. One more of the many interesting lecture going on within our University. It was also a good opportunity to reflect about the governance structures within the University (specially the Student Union) as well as about the meanings of being a student at CEU.Being a student is a status, a shared identity, but most of all an enjoyable and memorable experience. What makes this part of life unforgettable is of course all the fun one has with his/her friends, but also the fact that all things run up smoothly. And even when problems arise, there is always an institution to which you should be able to turn to. Or at least that was Allan Pall’s arguments when he mentioned the existence of a driving force promoting and shielding the interests of the students – their union.
Allan Päll, the chairman of the European Student Union which acts as an umbrella organization of 45 national student unions, gave a speech about their importance. He guided the audience through the history of unionism and sketched the present challenges of a globalized world to which the student unions (SU) shall adequately respond. To keep a pace with turbulent changes, SU should be open, active in lobbying for students; they should be service oriented not only toward students, but also toward academic community and provide a forum for a social clustering of its members. Among other things, the lecture stressed the importance of self-criticism within SU.
As we are aware of how busy our fellow SU representatives are, The CEU Weekly decided to undertake the glorious burden of attending the lecture in order to provide them with a load of reflection that could nurture upcoming activities.
We start with the first point – openness. Well… At least we know the name of the members of the SU (This was e.g. not the case of Cambodians under Pol Pot regime, where even the mere existence of party not mentioning the names of party members was unknown to the public). We have already said it two times, and we will keep iterating it again and again until the things change. Update your website! We are not interested in what your predecessors did; we want to know what you are doing!
Second, the fact that you should be service oriented does not mean that we expect members of the SU to provide a catering. Yet the nature of your work remains a mystery. Maybe it is similar to the job of intelligence agencies. You are virtually invisible, concealed to the eye of the public (and treacherous enemies) in order to uphold our well-being and safety. We can only guess…
Now we are reaching the third point – social clustering. For sure you did not ended up in the SU just to make your CV to look better which was mentioned by the lecturer as one of the motivations of people joining SU. No, we are convinced that it was a zeal and devotion to the ideal which brought you to the SU. So keep this ethos up! Engage in the dialogue with professors, lead the dialogue with us! Organize campaigns, lobby for the common good and firmly stay your ground! You got our mandate, our trust, so be the real leaders who set the pace!
SU should not stay aside of the stream of current events. On contrary, it should become a stream itself, channeling a wisdom and fervor thus bringing the headway to the whole society. And we are aware, that you, our SU members are capable of such a progress. But, could we kindly ask you to start off with little changes at CEU?
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