Dear Members of the CEU Community,
as a DSP student, finishing my stay at CEU in the coming weeks, I decided to contribute to CEU Weekly's end-of-the-year edition by writing a summary of the year I spent in the Community. This article is both a heartfelt thank you, expressing gratitude, and a serious appeal for discussion. As CEU is an “environment where the values of open society thrive and critical, reflective debate is encouraged,” I am positive it will be welcomed.
Like I said, I am a DSP student. Do you know what that stands for? Doctoral Support Program. If you are enrolled onto a doctoral program in another institution, you can apply for this status, which grants you the same rights as a regular CEU student for the maximum of one year. As I gathered, the majority of people don't know about it; nor did I. It is thanks to Jasmina Lukić, head of the Gender Department, that I am here. She has been an enormous help, as the head of the department, as a professor, and as a person. It was a shock, of course in a positive sense, that she had so much time and kindness – in short, energy – for me. Soon I realized, she was not an exception. Whoever I was assigned to, for the loads of administrative paperwork, was helpful and friendly. Here my thanks go to Natália Versegi from the Gender Department, Gyöngyi Kovács from the Admissions Office, and the whole Student Life Office.
My experiences are of course relative. I have studied and/or worked in 3 main universities in Hungary: Eötvös Loránd University, Corvinus University of Budapest, and the Technical University of Budapest. I am sure that even those of you who are not from Hungary are familiar with them. They are considered the leading institutions of higher education in the country, the pride and future of Hungary. Unfortunately, the more you are exposed to their messy, frustrating, and chaotic operation, the more desperate you feel about that future; and the more you appreciate the student-friendly circumstances CEU maintains with its healthy student-to-staff ratio and its humane paychecks. To give you some comparative numbers, at the Faculty of Humanities, the most popular faculty of Eötvös Loránd University (which, according to its propaganda, is the first and best university of Hungary), all the academic issues of 6,000 students are covered by 5 administrators, on minimum wage! This is the reality I came from; this is the world around CEU.
It is not only administration that I found progressive about CEU compared to the universities of the region. The most obvious facility many of you and even more of CEU's visitors would mention is the Library, with its comprehensive collections, modern e-resources, and user-friendly services. Did you know that it is more or less an imperative for a young scholar from the region to apply for (external) membership at the CEU Library if they want to write a decent dissertation, because the libraries of their own institutions are just outdated and small? In one of the libraries of the above mentioned universities, it was only a few years ago that the librarian was forced to start using a PC, instead of hand-scribbled notes, for managing records. Again, what a contrast!
Next to a well-equipped library, CEU offers services I have never seen working as well elsewhere. Thanks to the strenuous efforts and professional cooperation of diverse offices, the Community is bombarded with first-quality events that keep challenging the status quo from week to week. Let me highlight just a couple of services I was inspired by. With the Alumni Relations and Career Services, CEU makes sure its students are not left alone with their degrees. To mention some of the events of 2013, the Resume Book project, the Google Career Days, and the networking evenings made me feel that a degree in humanities and social sciences doesn't have to be a ticket to McDonald's or a call center, as is the experience for a large number of graduates in the region. The Human RightS Initiative was a great inspiration as well. HRSI convinced me, with events like the Vagina Monologues, the Coming Out Week, and the HCLU Documentaries, that the ways to fight injustices are countless and there are alternatives to our acquired passivity. I went home with similar exultation after events like CMCS's Media and Change Discussion Series and the Business School's Workshop on Social Entrepreneurship. Overall, I must say, the greatest lesson I am taking with me from this one-year-long stay at CEU is the inspiration and will to act, to Be the Change I Want to See, using the motto of Ashoka, hosted by yet another CEU facility, the InnovationsLab.
To cut the long story short, CEU is an exceptional institution. I know you are aware of this to some extent. The previous paragraphs, introducing a comparative element into the picture, were intended to make you see how much it is indeed exceptional. During these 10 months, I participated in more events offered by CEU than I did at my previous universities in almost 10 years.
But why is it that I needed to become a CEU student to learn about all these events, which by the way are labeled “open to the public”? Why is it that eye-opening and highly important talks like the Rectors In Conversation, Senator Katherine Zappone's speech, or the Open Society Foundation's presentations were held in a half empty Gellner Room? Why is it that for every event, 3 email reminders are sent out in the internal mailing list but the society outside of CEU rarely gets the information, thus the chance to attend? What happened to CEU's commitment to “making tangible contributions to society . . . by sharing its knowledge”?
Why is it that 80% of the volunteers at OSA's Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival are CEU students? Why is it that I was admitted as an intern for making the festival's 10th anniversary video for the grand opening, that is, for a significant task, solely on the basis of my CEU email address, without needing to prove any relevant skills? What happened to CEU's equal opportunity policy?
And why is it that I needed serendipity walking through my door to inform me about the DSP status so I get the ticket to all these privileges; because these seem to be privileges? Why is this “open society” so closed?
Let me ask you, Dear Members of the CEU Community, why the information and the inspiration CEU works so hard to disseminate, in order to help reform the society, is kept from what it aims to change? CEU is doing an excellent job implanting the seeds of progress in its students. But why stop with 1,500 students, when it could be much more, a whole society?
“I think CEU is now mature enough that it can be at the cutting edge,” the Founder of Open Society Foundations and this University concluded on his recent book launch. So be it!
Looking forward to the reflective debate,
Anna Szlavi
0 comments:
Post a Comment