International Student Movement

There is a Livestream right now from the plenary in Vienna. Crazy!!
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/unsereuni
They only speak in German so far :-)

------ Breaking News ------

University of Vienna (Austria) is occupied

University of Graz (Austria) is occupied

University of Klagenfurt (Austria) is occupied

University of Linz (Austria) is occupied

Academyof  Fine Art in Vienna (Austria) is occupied

Technical University of Graz (Austria) is occupied

Technical University of Vienna (Austria) is occupied

Demonstrations are scheduled to take place across the country on Wednesday [28/10].

[28/10 - 0:10am GMT]

I was asked to publish the following message in here:

Dear friends and colleagues!

The Vienna University of Technology is on fire! All Austrian Universities are on fire!
Statement of the protesting students:

Lecture Hall 1 of the Vienna University of Technology has been occupied since Tuesday, 27th of October 2009. The protesting students strongly identify themselves with the „Audimax“-movement of the University of Vienna. In addition to the demands made by the Students at the University of Vienna the protesting students at the Vienna University of Technology aim to call attention to the specific problems concerning the largest technical university of Austria. The large demonstration that took place on Wednesday, 28th of October was supported by 1500 students of the Vienna University of Technology.

A short chronology of Events:

• The protest was initiated on Tuesday, 20th of October by students and tutors at the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna who decided to embark on a work stoppage. The building has been occupied since then.
  
• Since Thursday, 22nd of October the largest lecture hall in Austria, the University of Vienna‘s Audimax, has been occupied. A huge protest movement has developed with the students organising a large variety of task groups, a communal kitchen and a daily agenda including an evening program. A live-stream and a homepage were installed, information regarding the occupation and the full demands of the occupants can be found at http://unibrennt.at .
  
• A general meeting took place on Tuesday, 27th of October at the Vienna University of Technology, deciding to also occupy the University Lecture Hall 1.
  
• The following day a demonstration took place in Vienna. The organisers claim that 50.000 people participated.
  
• At this moment all notable Austrian universities (a total of 10) are occupied by students.
  

Demands:

Demands of the Audimax-Occupants:

1) Education instead of Schooling
Education for a mature society as opposed to just schooling according to economical applicability! Our goal is to make free, self determined studies available to everyone! We demand an end to the schoolification of our curricula and therefore a fundamental revision of the BA/MA system!

2) Free access to universities
We want a free place at university for everyone and the abolishment of tuition fees, including those for non-EU Citizens and long-term-students. The guarantee of an adequate offer of studies must not be obtained by the implementation of entry restrictions. Free access to universities and a high quality of teaching are not a contradiction! There are not too many students but rather too few university places!

3) Democratisation of universities
Our goal is the democratic organisation of universities. This includes democratisation of the administration in a way by which professors, students and scientific as well as non-scientific personnel are equally involved in the decision-making procedure.

4) Full financing of universities

5) The realization of the Disability Discrimination Act must take place at all Austrian universities

6) An end to uncertain employment relationships at the universities

7) A 50% proportion of women in all areas of university personnel

Specific demands regarding the Vienna University of Technology:
The protesters at the Vienna University of Technology have formed a task group to gather and study the problems of students at their own university. Owing to the fact that the educational sector is lacking great amounts of money there are too few laboratory places for computer sciences, architecture and chemistry. Due to the growing number of elementary students for physics, restrictions are also feared in this field of study. All teacher training courses are uncertain as to their continued existence, should they be abolished at our university, there would, for instance, be no training for the school subject „descriptive geometry“ in the whole of Austria.

The personal commitment of students as tutors is compensated by means of wage agreement payments, but these payments reduce the total budget for tutors. It is feared that the phases at the beginnings of studies will be intensified by means of „knock-out“-exams.

The Ministry of Science desires more academics in Austria but provides for budgets that are too small for this purpose. The only official policy is to continue to reduce costs. The students of the Vienna University of Technology are protesting against this complete ignorance and the steady worsening of educational conditions.

Call to solidarise with the protests

The students of the Vienna University of Technology call for all students to solidarise with the Austrian students and also to organise protests at their universities! Most of our problems (including criticism of the Bologna-System and entry restrictions) are pan-European problems!
Best regards!