"International Student Movement"

Students in the Republic of Macedonia for the first time in history have started to wake up after long years of apathy and passiveness.

History

Since 2003 the Bologna process started implementing in the Macedonian public educational system and with it, the tuition and fees were introduced.
After that, almost every year the tuition and fees were increased, but the students, being apathetic and passive, never tried to raise their voice against these decisions. This is largely because the official student union (in 2008 transformed, or better only renamed into ‘student parliament’ consisted of the same members) of the University of Cyril and Methodius never really defended them. The people from the student union/parliament, including its president are put there by whichever party is in the government, and through it the party in the government is controlling the students, never giving them the opportunity to unite and ask for a better and quality education as well as better student life. The student union through its activists controls who gets to receive and keep a place in the student dorms, who gets to enter the elections, who gets to win the elections, they make up their own bureaucratic rules on how the elections are performed etc., all of this non-transparently. Moreover, there are numerous cases where the activists of the student union asked students from outside Skopje who applied for a place in the dorms – to show them that they have a membership card from the party that’s in the government in order for them to receive a place in the dorms. The students (that applied for the dorms) on the other hand, have virtually no choice but to comply and get a party membership card. If they don’t do that, they either have to rent an apartment which is much more expensive, or quit their studies since their families aren’t able to pay for their children’s living expenses. To add to that, the living conditions in most of the student dorms in Skopje are next to miserable, most of them have never been renovated, and they are built over 50 years ago!
Regularly, every year at least 1 student gets food poisoning from the food in the dorms’ dining rooms.

Present situation

This whole situation has made the students largely apathetic, passive, without trust that the student union can do something about them, and without enough courage to act and change things. Tuition for Bachelor’s studies got as high as 600 euro on some colleges (state quota*) and 1200 euro (private quota**). As an illustration, the average salary in the capital Skopje is 300 euro, and in the rest of the cities is 150 euro!

Founding of “Free Index”

Not long after the student occupations of the universities in Croatia in April 2009, some students got encouraged to rise up and make an effort to change things. And so it was formed a new independent student movement called “Free Index” ***.

First protest

After only about one month of existence, on 21st of May 2009, student activists from “Free Index” organized a big protest throughout one university campus, demanding tuition cut, student benefits, renovation of student dorms, reopening the student radio (which was closed about half a year before), end of the monopoly of the student union, their connection to the government and their control over the students etc.

The protest couldn’t have gone without a dark spot, as some political party student activists wanting to sabotage the protest, raised a flag of the political party in the opposition, which was removed shortly after.
Luckily, it didn’t get to the journalists’ cameras, and it didn’t cause much of a problem. After the protest, there were series of TV debates about the protest and the demands of “Free Index”.While the protest and the debates did raise the public consciousness about the problems of student life, it has done little to change the actual situation. The only change was an attempt to restart the student radio (although this is still in preparation).

Second protest

Later, in October 2009 the student union announced that on the 21st of October elections for new president of the student union will be held.
“Free Index” having been preparing for a new protest, has decided that the date of the protest should be one day before the elections, to state that it doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of official representatives of the students, as well as repeat its demands. The reason about this is because the elections are not transparent, the procedure for becoming a candidate is largely unknown (“Free Index” had to dig for the statute of the student parliament to find out what’s the procedure), heavily bureaucratic, and most important of all, there is no census on the number of voters! And so the new president elected on the 21st of October 2009 was elected with only about 6000 out of about 7000 total votes, and there are 50 000 students ! And the new president is legitimate for the student parliament.

Again this time political party activists managed to get between the crowds and take out the flag of the party in the opposition which was again removed quickly. But this time they were more organized, took a photo of it, and sent the photo to the media. They even managed to infiltrate in Free Index even before the protest, get a hold of our official flyer, change some of it contents and print 3000 copies of it! Moreover, many of the students living in the dorms were threatened by student union activists not to go out on the protest or they will lose their bed in the dorm.

Soon after the protest, most of the TV stations presented the protest as “probably been organized by the opposition party”. Not only that, but that same opposition party and the one in the government used the protest as their usual daily quarrel. Student parliament, in lack of better arguments, also started attacking us with imaginary facts that “many people seen on the protest were actually opposition party activists”. . . . The whole situation was a huge blast on the reputation of Free Index. The public’s attention was shifted from the demands Free Index stands for, to whether Free Index is paid by the opposition party to bring down the government or not. A lot of students lost their hope in Free Index, but even more so, a seed of mistrust and doubt was planted among the members of Free Index.
Obviously someone didn’t like the students to get organized and fight for their rights. Sadly, some of the key activists stepped out of the movement, unable to cope with the situation and moved by the seed of mistrust.

But not all is lost for Free Index. Despite what happened, we have also attracted new students to our cause. We continue our struggle, both towards achieving our goals and towards regaining the students’ trust!

Near future

We are working on developing a platform of action and an alternative to the structure and functioning of the student parliament (union) as it is now.

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Explanations:
*State Quota
– Students with high grades from high school get into ‘state quota’, but the number (quota) is limited, and their studies before the Bologna process were paid by the state, now only their tuition is a bit lower.

**Private Quota – All of the rest of the students, who didn’t get to enter the state quota

***The word ‘index’ in the name comes from the booklet which in Macedonian is called “indeks” - that every student in Macedonia has, in which his/her exam grades are written.