Standing up for students

In his first speech as the incoming president of the University Students' Council, Anthony Camilleri spelt out the KSU's agenda for the coming year. Here are extensive excerpts:

I am proud to be a student. Students are not apathetic: we are not disinterested, we are not only concerned with our own well-being. Student life may be less activistic but it is no less active than in previous generations. Our university is home to no less than 23 student organisations - the last page of this year's annual report is graced with the names of over 200 volunteers who chose to help in just one - KSU.

Tour the large student bodies of Europe... the Young European Federalists, the European Youth Forum, The Unions of Students in Europe, the European Demochristian Students, the European pharmaceutical and medical student associations, and you will find Maltese students proudly representing their peers at the highest levels... so much so that they are quickly earning Malta the nickname of the Luxembourg in the Mediterranean. Maltese students are further active within parishes, within support organisations for the disabled, in fundraisers for more causes than I could list let alone recognise. You can find many things to criticise us with... but apathy is not one of them.

This said, it is our role as KSU to further mobilise the student body. Despite the healthy activity, Maltese students can be rightly said to be disillusioned by politics... witness enough to this is the Gonzi-Sant-Vassallo debate on campus lately. The debate was well attended, students just left after half an hour because the leaders of the country couldn't connect to them. KSU has to lead the way in the correcting this: we don't need to translate policy issues so that students will care, we need to do our best to set an agenda that treats the topics we find important. Its ridiculous to say that students are not interested in the well-being of the country: our role in both the Yes and No camps prior to the EU referendum should have been enough to put paid to that concept.

Of course, being a student should never be all work and no play, and this year KSU will continue to offer students the chance not only to attend but to take active part in various signature events throughout the year. Campus Fest, Frisk and Students' Festival will raise warm feelings in most students' hearts, yet there are nine months to a university calendar, and we intend to provide a unique, high quality event for each of them, ranging from parties to high cultural events: giving students the chance to enjoy events which would not otherwise be organised, and making sure their creative selves stay healthy.

I am proud to be a member of the university of Malta. I have beeen a student for four years, and despite the many criticisms I have levelled at the university in my past two years as Education Commissioner, yes, I am essentially convinced I am receiving a good education. This, however, is absolutely no reason for complacency. KSU's much vaunted stakeholder principle means that as students we do not simply consider ourselves passive customers of the education process, but as co-owners of the educational experience and as such, just as responsible for anything that happens at the university if we choose to do nothing about it.

For this reason, over the next year you will hear us again and again asking for ever higher and more verificable quality standards at the university, you will here us asking for accountability, for new teaching methods, for the improvement of employability. It is obviously our vested interest to get the best education possible, yet if we are the generation of tomorrow... our vested interest is to a certain extent also our country's. While our proposals on education are often of a technical nature, this does not make them any less important, and it is here, more than anywhere else, that we appeal to journalists to take note of what is happening, and to put it before the scrutiny of the nation.

Linked intrinsically to this issue is the question of student support, or stipends. Once again, I express KSU's commitment to stand firm on this issue. Every person who can make the grades has a right to a university education without excessive burdens, and the country has a need for graduates. It is our belief that the student support mechanism has been one of the chief contributors to university admissions and we have publicly strongly cautioned the government on the ill effects that might come to pass were the mechanism halted.

I am proud to be Maltese. It is said that the great expression of love lies between a mother and her child...and it is with this that Dun Karm chose to compare our relationship with our country in our National Anthem. In our new identity, we have moved beyond this, and now apart from our undiminished love for our country, we are also proud to be European.

As KSU, we have long commented and acted on national issues with no direct relation to student life, simply because we felt it our duty as citizens.

The prime example of such must be our position on the pensions' reform. Although the proposed changes are likely eventually to hit us personally the worst, we have nevertheless given the proposed reforms one of the warmest receptions, in realisation that our well-being and the country's are one and the same.

Although welfare reform is likely again to take centre stage for KSU and for any body active in the social field over the next year, this will not be our only area of action. Transport sustainability will be a key area of action, from environmental and practical views... and especially from the view of continued pressrure to make public transport a more realistic alternative to private veichles. On the other hand, we have felt the need to address that scourge that threatens everything our country stands for: the rise of xenophobia and racism. We do not intend to promote an atmosphere of tolerance or acceptance on campus... but that which Malta has always been known best for: welcome and hospitality to everyone.

As Malta's largest student representative body, KSU does not just take the role of a University Students' Council, but by default also acts as a union for all university students. Within this role, KSU will continue to defend student rights whenever and however they be threatened, as well as engage in dialogue with the social partners and various other organisations for the continued benefit of our members.

In 2005-6, KSU will do what it does best, and what it has been doing successfully for over 100 years: represent students.