About the right to take an action

“There is a wonderful old Italian joke about the poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging: ‘Dear Saint, please, please, please, let me win the lottery.’ Finally the exasperated statue comes to life and looks down into the begging man and says: ‘My son, please, please, please buy a ticket!’” (c). You may know this anecdote from the “Eat, Pray, Love” movie or book by Elizabeth Gilbert (or maybe any other source), but for sure in this blog entry I’m not promoting neither of them. What I am promoting is the proactive position in your life overall and student life particularly, and I think you got the idea already. There is no reason to just walking around and complaining to your friends, for instance, that you don’t like something about the university life, when you actually have the chance and the right to change the things for the better; you can take an action.

You are the part of the Stockholm University student community, no matter if you are spending several years here doing your undergraduate, master or PhD or you are an exchange student only for the one term. As well it does not matter if you are a Swedish or an international student – you have the opportunity to influence and to improve your study conditions.

My home country is Ukraine, and I should say, such thing as the student governance is almost unknown and not existent there. For me, student elections and opportunity to affect every day life of the students and even, to the certain extend, the decisions of the University authorities are so new! In the university where I received my undergrad degree, Student Union was just helping head of the departments in organizing planned by them celebrations (for example professional holidays) and promoting night clubs around the city, where you can get student discount for the entrance. Meanwhile, all the important decisions regarding student life were taken by the high university officials and those decisions were never for the student benefits. Nevertheless, some people were bringing cases to the courts or getting into the troubles (this one from my personal experience) just trying to deliver to the officials collective student concerns, that the study conditions are not very pleasant and supportive.

Here in Sweden everything seems to be much easier. It is your right to influence. It is your right to vote. And it is a pity that a lot of students just ignoring those rights.

TIP is here now to change this situation. We are trying to involve each and every student into the participation in the university life. Join us tomorrow (Thursday, 24^th of March at 12 pm in Nobelhuset) for the information meeting to learn more about us, to become a part of our party. Or at least support us with your vote and we will do our best to make your study at the Stockholm University even more enjoyable than ever!

Yours sincerely,

Kseniia Beznos.