South Tyrolean student body

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The South Tyrolean Students' Union ( sh.asus , Italian associazione universitaria sudtirolese , Ladin lia di studenc dl'université de Südtirol ) is the inter-ethnic organization representing South Tyrolean students. In the trade union sense, it represents both students from South Tyrol outside the country and all those students who are enrolled at universities in the autonomous province of Bolzano, and was founded on April 15, 1955 as a non-profit association (today: “Association for the promotion of the community ", VFG) was founded. The head office and office are in Bolzano , with six branch offices in larger university cities in Austria and Northern Italy .

Tasks of the sh.asus

The sh.asus defines itself as an inter-ethnic association. Its main task is to represent the student, social and societal interests of the students. It takes a position on student and educational issues as well as on cultural, social and socio-political issues, appears in public in this regard and takes appropriate measures. Other areas of activity are high-school graduate advice and the organization and handling of cultural events.

construction

In contrast to other student representatives, sh.asus is not tied to a specific location and, in addition to its headquarters in Bolzano, has six branches in major university cities. The association is headed by an overall committee made up of the respective committees of the branch offices. The chairperson is elected by the committee and is the association's central reference person both externally and internally.

Headquarters in Bolzano

At the headquarters in Bolzano, four full-time employees take care of the needs of around 15,000 students. Most of the working time is put into consulting. All high school graduates and high school students have the opportunity to obtain advice on their future university studies. Around 1000 students turn to the office every year to apply for a study grant from the Province of Bolzano online alone. In addition, free psychological counseling is offered to students.

Branch offices

The actual club life takes place in the branch offices: in Innsbruck , Graz , Salzburg , Vienna , Bologna and Trento . The branch offices offer overnight accommodation and organize events in a cultural context, but also events for sport and leisure. All students have the opportunity to take part in the action and contribute their own suggestions and ideas.

Members

Anyone who accepts the sh.asus statute can become a member. Membership is open to everyone regardless of their origin, language group, etc. However, only students have the right to vote. The association has around 1,600 members.

Political activity

The insights gained during the consultancy work are implemented in the representation in the trade union sense . Sh.asus is represented with two votes in the state advisory board for the right to higher education. There and in constant contact with the state administration, the parties and politicians, she campaigns for improvements in all aspects of studies. Traditionally, the recognition of degrees between Austria and Italy is a focus. Furthermore, the sh.asus tries to adapt the study grant system to the requirements of the 21st century through freely accessible workshops. The main focus is on ensuring that the right to higher education is implemented. The sh.asus speaks out against tuition fees as an educational policy steering instrument.

Cultural activity

The sh.asus publishes the "Skolast" (formerly: the traveling skolast) twice a year. The magazine has existed since 1956 and is one of the oldest multilingual publications in South Tyrol. The idea of ​​an own magazine, implemented primarily at the instigation of Rainer Seberich and Franz von Walther, has become one of the most successful projects of the SH. The choice of topic is determined by current events and student concerns.

history

The origins lie in the immediate post-war period. The South Tyrolean students formed the "Association of South Tyrolean Students" for a short time. This association took care of the regulation of the exit formalities and the equality of the South Tyrolean students with their Austrian fellow students. At the beginning of the 1950s, however, the student union no longer existed.

Around 1955 the number of South Tyrolean students was around 300. The main motivation for founding a new student association was above all the preservation of the cultural heritage and the solidarity of the South Tyrolean students at the universities outside South Tyrol.

This background, but also the open question about the degree and the economic support and organizational help for the students urged Josef Ferrari to promote the establishment of a university association. The vice headmaster was the spiritual father of the SH. "Above all, it was his concern about the future of the German school that determined him to encourage university students to collaborate and take initiative." Ferrari wanted to remedy the blatant shortage of trained secondary school teachers.

After the fascist higher education law banned studying abroad for nationals of non-Italian ethnicity in the new provinces until 1949, the signing of the Austro-Italian cultural agreement in 1952 brought movement to the question of study titles. After the ratification of the agreement in 1954, a meeting of the expert commission became apparent in the coming year, which was supposed to compile a list of those degrees acquired in Austria that are on an equal footing with the degrees that can be acquired in Italy. The founding of an association of university students was therefore urgent, a say in the sensitive issue of the degree could only be achieved through a common appearance.

The formation of a student organization was decisively promoted by the Merano University Weeks, which were first organized by the South Tyrolean Cultural Institute in 1954 and at which South Tyrolean students from different study locations discussed this topic. After an unsatisfactory meeting in December 1954, things got moving around Easter 1955. A provisional statute was drawn up and a founding meeting was called for April 15, 1955 at the Sargant inn in Bolzano. Dr. Paul Stacul was elected provisional president of the South Tyrolean student body. Immediately after this meeting, work began on building up the secretariat, recruiting members, finding liaison officers and contacting the authorities.

While Josef Ferrari was primarily concerned with compiling university statistics and advertising for academically trained teachers, the scope of action for the student body increased immediately after the foundation to include several agendas: Matura advice, intervening in the question of the study title, the publication of a university newspaper (“Der fahrende Skolast ”) and the organization of study conferences.

The first ordinary general assembly was held on September 12, 1955. The organization was legally constituted and Franz von Walther was elected its first president.

In February 1956 the first single issue of the "driving Skolasten" appeared. In the following years, the young organization was also able to raise its profile through the annual study conferences from 1957 onwards, in which high-ranking representatives from politics, business and culture regularly took part. The student body was also involved as a co-organizer of the Merano University Weeks. In the first few years of its existence, the SH organized holiday trips, helped found university groups and the procurement of the “booths”, and took care of scholarship applications and cultural contributions.

In its early days, the SH also had to deal with the politically difficult situation in South Tyrol. An example of this is the “passport question” from 1963. The SH intervened with the responsible political authorities to relax the restrictive exit and entry regulations in the interests of South Tyrolean students in Austria.

Due to the rapidly increasing number of members, the organizational model soon had to be reformed. The statutes of the SH, amended in 1965 and 1968, finally provided for the replacement of the general assembly by a committee and the replacement of the president by a chairman. In 1964, the later South Tyrolean governor Luis Durnwalder was elected chairman of the SH.

In the statute of 1968, the SH describes itself as the association of South Tyrolean students, which is an independent organization and not bound by ideology (Art. 1, §1, Statute 1968). The task group is the protection and representation of the interests of the South Tyrolean student body during the time of their university studies, more specifically the technical, cultural, social and sporting promotion as well as the representation of economic and social interests (Art. 2, § 2, Statute 1968). The first seat of the SH was an office in the premises of the South Tyrolean cultural institute in the Laubengasse, from 1956 the Dr.-Streiter-Gasse was the address of the university students. From 1967 the SH resided on the top floor of the “ Walther von der Vogelweide ” (“Waltherhaus”) cultural center , strategically positioned opposite the South Tyrolean Schützenbund . With the establishment of the Free University of Bozen and the associated new tasks, the new office in Kapuzinergasse was moved into in 2007.

The discussion about cultural-political engagement and the emerging university debate led to differences of opinion in the course of the 1960s and to a realignment of the SH, which changed from an organization close to the SVP , mainly concerned with union interest representation, to a kind of extra-parliamentary opposition. The upheaval in society, which did not stop at the South Tyrolean students, led to a serious crisis in the SH, which culminated in a referendum to abolish the SH.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the “supplement problem” and the university debate became acute: The SH was more and more involved in cultural-political debates and organized study conferences on the subject. The gap to the SVP grew bigger and bigger. In the 1960s, the SH began to open up to the Italians in South Tyrol.

In retrospect, the “supplement problem” and the university question cannot be viewed separately from one another. The secondary school reform brought with it the side effect that over 800 (80%) of the teachers without the necessary degree were employed as supplements at the middle and high schools. In this context, the call for a South Tyrolean university for the purpose of teacher training was loud.

The going out of oneself and the more or less open opposition to the politics of the SVP can also be seen in the membership statistics. Georg Fulterer wrote in 1973: "Since the original aim of the SH, the recognition of the Austrian degree, was fulfilled, but not all students could identify with the 'big politics', it also happened that a lot of colleagues distanced themselves from the SH, frozen their activities in the association or did not even think to join. The result: although the number of students has grown extraordinarily strongly in recent years, the number of members has remained the same and has even decreased this year. "

However, the SH was only able to do justice to its social opposition role to a limited extent: The politically relevant forces in the country had noticed that the SH lacked a power base. The board of directors and the chairman changed from year to year.

Nevertheless, the SH broke new ground in the 1970s as well: In 1976, Renate Mumelter was the first woman to hold the prestigious position of chairwoman of the student body.

The second half of the 1970s can be seen as the most politically active time of the SH. This depended on three circumstances: - Italy was extremely polarized politically. The communists celebrated their greatest electoral success, - the SVP tried to "tame" the SH through the Young Generation (JG) - the SH drew attention to itself through massive public relations work. The “Letter of the 83” is probably representative for this section. This came about in 1978 after a visit by a high-ranking KPI delegation, which also met with representatives of the SH. Günther Pallaver , SH chairman since 1977, wrote an open letter to Governor Silvius Magnago and State Councilor for School and Culture Anton Zelger after severe attacks by the young generation of the SVP and the daily newspaper “ Dolomiten_ (Zeitung) ” . In the letter, Pallaver denounced the restriction of freedom of expression in the country. The letter was signed by 83 personalities, including Alexander Brenner-Knoll, Oktavia Brugger, Otto Saurer , Hans Widmann , Krista Posch , Rainer Seberich, Anton Sitzmann and Egmont Jenny . Above all, the foreign media reported extensively on the letter and thus indirectly supported the cause of the SH. As Pallaver explained 24 years after the publication of the letter, it was possible, completely unexpectedly, to generate a great deal of media coverage and to show the South Tyrolean reality to the South Tyroleans themselves. “In South Tyrol, the 'Dolomites' prevented pluralism of opinion. As a result, our only opportunity to be heard was through the foreign press, ”says Pallaver. As a result, aggressive public relations work became the SH's popular means of presenting its concerns via press releases and conferences. At that time, in addition to the travel allowances, the recognition of study titles and the scholarship matters, the SH campaigned above all for the equality of South Tyrolean students (regardless of their native language) with their Austrian colleagues.

Internally at SH there were "intra-party" tensions towards the end of the 1970s. The SVP tried to gain influence in the SH through the conservative Young European Student Initiative (JES). The ballots between 1975 and 1978 all just went to the left in the student body.

At the beginning of the 1980s the situation between SVP and SH relaxed noticeably. However, this was accompanied by a concentration on other areas of focus. In 1985, for example, the “Women's Refuge” campaign was launched, and at the same time a board collective took the lead in the organization for the first time. The first name change also took place during this time: The South Tyrolean Students 'Union is now called the South Tyrolean Students' Union.

In 1992 the SH finally slipped into an existence-threatening crisis. After two articles in the Athesia weekly magazine "WAS", in which the precarious financial situation and alleged unclean machinations of the board were denounced, there was an open dispute between the governing board collective and a group of students from Trento. They supposedly planned the whole "WHAT" campaign. After three changes in the management board from March to June 1992, the situation calmed down again. The "WAS" affair comes to an end after a lawsuit brought by SH against the publishing house Athesia in 1994 when the publisher pays damages. However, the turbulence was not over. In 1994, the SH continued to struggle with financial difficulties, problems arose in financial management and especially in the management of the club. Later the name was changed to sh.asus (after another name change, asus stands for associazione studenti / esse universitari / e sudtirolesi).

In the second part of the 90s and around the turn of the millennium, the activities of sh.asus focused on cultural and socio-geopolitical engagement. Fifty years after the end of the Second World War , several Skolastes appeared that addressed racism and right-wing extremism , and the University of Bolzano, which was in the making, was also critically examined: When a possibility was found with the creation of a "Free University" to put it under political control by law To bind the state government, the once determined pioneer of a South Tyrolean university turns into its greatest critic.

With the advent of new media, the oldest bilingual magazine in South Tyrol, Skolast, fell into a crisis: from 1998 to 2000 not a single issue appeared. It was only on the occasion of the census in autumn 2001 that a group of students found themselves again to take care of an edition. Since then, the Skolast has been published regularly with two issues per year. The geopolitical commitment reached its climax in 2001 on the occasion of the G8 summit in Genoa , which was also reflected in the following years with several events on the subject of neoliberalism. In educational policy, it was not possible to overcome the rifts that had formed between the young University of Bozen and the sh.asus. Contacts remained sparse and were accompanied by distrust on both sides.

In 2005 sh.asus finally celebrated 50 years of its existence with its own series in the Neue Südtiroler Tageszeitung and a big party on the Haselburg above Bolzano. At the same time, this date marked a turning point: with the introduction of merit scholarships by the province of Bolzano, a working group was formed within the association to demand fairer criteria and finally to enforce a proportional representation . As a result, sh.asus established itself as a thought leader in the field of student funding and was able to report some successes, also by promoting cooperation with other political parties and interest groups.

With the move of the Bolzano headquarters in the summer of 2007, the latest chapter in the history of the association began: From now on, contacts with the Free University of Bolzano increased: in 2008, a separate Skolast was published for the "FUB" and a short time later the student representative became the University a fixed voting right in the committee of the association guaranteed by statute. Today the University of Bolzano is a natural part of the South Tyrolean student body - and together with the Innsbruck branch, it constitutes the largest contingent of around 1,600 members of the association.

Today the SH strives to work with various political organizations in order to be able to stand up for common concerns. Through this lobbying, various issues such as B. the recognition of the degree and the reimbursement of travel expenses in the event of elections.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Founding act of the SH, original document, association archive
  2. ↑ Ingrid Hasler, The skolast in the literary life of South Tyrol with special consideration of the years 1956 to 1969, phil. Dipl. Innsbruck 199, p. 16.
  3. ^ Franz von Walther, The Foundation of the South Tyrolean Students' Union, in: der fahrende skolast; Südtiroler Hochschülerzeitung, 10th year, issue 6/1965, pp. 3–8, here p. 3.
  4. ^ Rainer Seberich, South Tyrolean School History. Mother tongue instruction under foreign law, Bozen 2000, p. 241.
  5. ↑ a b von Walther, Foundation of the South Tyrolean Students' Union, in: skolast 6/1965, pp. 3–8, here p. 3.
  6. ^ Rainer Seberich, Five Years of the South Tyrolean Students' Union, in: der fahrende skolast: Südtiroler Hochschülerzeitung, 5th year, edition 2/1960, p. 2; 10/11, here p. 2.
  7. ↑ SH archive, v. Num. 7.
  8. ↑ SH archive, v. Num. 4.
  9. ↑ Hellmuth Ladurner, The dispute begins. Streiflichter on the SH from 1965 to 1974, in: der fahrende skolast: Südtiroler Hochschülerzeitung, 30th year, special issue June 1985, p. 10–11, here p. 11.
  10. ↑ Georg Fulterer, attempt to analyze the complex quantity SH, in: der fahrende skolast: Südtiroler hochschulerzeitung, 18th year, issue 1/1973, p. 3–4, here p. 3.
  11. ↑ Ladurner, The dispute begins, skolast special issue 1985, pp. 10–11, here p. 11.
  12. ↑ Alexander Larch / Markus Mascelli, The Events of the Last Weeks, in: SH-Archiv, v. Number 77.
  13. ^ History. In: asus.sh . Retrieved April 18, 2020.