“University should be an entirely public and free centre, with easy access to everyone”
04/12/2018
Candidacy A is formed by Estel Oleart Mariné (president), Albert Font Sancho (secretary), Daniel Olivella Galindo (treasurer), Júlia Vañó i Boira, Laura Roger i Anglada, Guillem Rojano Borreguero, Oriol Carmona Sànchez (vicepresidents).
1) Why should the Plenary vote your candidacy?
Estel: We believe that the Student Council’s Plenary suffered many changes since the end of the last academic year until now. A turning point came when the Permanent Committee disappeared and the new regulation was implemented to change the situation. In that moment we presented our candidacy, which was meant to guarantee a new way of functioning as well as transparency and to bring the Student’s Council nearer. We think that these past months we have been working along this line, but we could not do as much as we had planned because of the regulation’s changes and for the fact that we had never been inside a body of representation like this one. We believe that now, with the experience we gained in the past few months, we can take a step forward with the candidacy that we already submitted, which is focused on training Student Representatives, legalizing other spaces of student representation and guarantying quality and transparency within the representative body, as well as admitting a stance and understanding the student’s concerns.
2) What makes you different to other candidacies?
Albert: I think that there is a lot of work that we have been doing in the faculties’ assemblies for quite a long time and, furthermore, the fact that we have already been in a short candidacy. Now we have the experience of how the body works as well as the contact with university and other academic and institutional departments.
E: In our candidacy, some members are already in other representative and student participation bodies such as the Senate or the centres’ boards, which gives us experience and different points of views. We have also tried to balance out between the seniors and freshman members that are very motivated. We also try to have representation in all centres. Unfortunately, we could not ensure such equality in this candidacy, and this is something we recognise we have failed on. In the past candidacy we tried our best to guarantee it but, nonetheless, we are very proud of the candidacy we are presenting. We are rooting for it.
3) What model of university do you defend?
A: From our point of view, we believe that university should be an entirely public and free centre, with easy access to everyone, to the whole working class that cannot afford it and need a scholarship. It also should be a feminist space that fights aggressions and any sort of sexist behaviour, both from the institution and from the classrooms. Furthermore, it also needs to be a transformative space that encourages critical thinking.
4) Which are, to you, the most serious problems that public university students face?
E: There are some problems that most people cannot experience anymore because they can’t even access university in the first place. We are talking about very high university fees ever since their rise in 2012 that have limited the access of many people. Some other reasons are the reduction of scholarships, the increase of the cost of living, the price of rent for those who are from elsewhere than Barcelona or Cerdanyola, public transport, etc. All these reasons limit access to university and even staying in it. Our former treasurer had to quit university mid-year. There are many economic and material restrictions and it is not reclaimed enough sometimes. That is the main problem.
On the other hand, we also encounter other problems concerning the reconciliation between work and university. Some centres do not offer annual evaluation. If you are forced to attend an 80% of lectures, you cannot work, which is my case. We also find that there are problems at a sexist level within campus, by both lecturers and Professors, which have been reported for more than two years now, and also the existence of aggressors on campus. Furthermore, problems regarding structural systems, although university has done a good job so far in this issue. There is also the presence of right-wing extremists and fascists on campus, which we have been reporting for three years and we consider that the actions taken were not enough nor satisfactory.
Thus, we weave a map with multiple issues that are not easy to tackle them all from the same position. We, as CEUAB, cannot give solution to everything because we don’t have the power for it. Nonetheless, as student representatives, our duty is to point at these issues, identify them and do our best to get the responsible areas to tackle them.
5) Do you think that students are represented enough in university?
A: Personally, I would say that they aren’t because student representation within decision-making bodies is the minimum.
E: There is just one student in the Board of Trustees and we are 31,000 students in UAB. The Board of Trustees is where companies really are, and in the moment of making decision there is just one single student. In all representation bodies we are less than 30%, except CEUAB. Most students aren’t aware of this and, thus, a real representation cannot be assured.
Additionally, there are other spaces for student representation like the assemblies, which involve direct involvement and are open to everyone, but they have no legitimization within the institution. This leaves us in a double paradigm because we don’t get any credit when we organise things and the spaces that we get offered have no real impact.
6) In your programme, you stated that one of the issues is that students do not know internal structures. What are your proposals to change this situation?
E: Training. I often have doubts when knowing who I have to speak to. If we already have doubts, most students, representatives or not, also have them. We want to make up for these shortages on a Plenary and Student Council level first and, step by step, take it to students in trainings.
7) What have you achieved during the term?
E: Firstly, we can say that we have objectives more internal related to management because being in the Executive Committee is an everyday work. We sorted the mail, tried to speed up the communication system between us and we have put a lot of emphasis on transparency at the time of making decisions. All the plenary sessions that we organised –of which none was official because there was no quorum- were turned into extraordinary and informative sessions for people to debate openly without making decisions. We understand that, even if we are in the Executive Committee, we are exactly as equal as any other representative.
Therefore I believe that, in an internal level, the day-to-day communication management, transparency and the will to establish bridges between representatives are the three things that we have focused on more during this term. In a political level, we teamed up with Consell de l’Estudiantat de les Universitats Catalanes (CEUCAT) and we prioritised it as a supra-university space of retro-organisation, we supported the 28 and 29N strike and we also have several stances regarding the presence of fascists on campus. We tried to be a resource for the CEUCAT in aspects in which UAB is more advanced, such as the Protocol against sexist aggressions on campus, for other universities to implement it as well.
Taking into consideration the fact that we had summer in between, we have done our best and we are quite satisfied with the result. In the next candidacy we will focus more on the training, which we could not implement, and other issues.
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