Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Diós Mio - la UBA!

Hello there!

Now I want to tell you what happened the last few weeks at my college " la UBA". The last 2 weeks I almost haven't had classes at all. Especially my faculty, which is the one of "social science" - en castellano "sciencias sociales" is fighting actively against many problems that have occured during years and found a peak the last few weeks.

What are they fighting for?
First of all they're fighting against the bad conditions under which especially my faculty is suffering the most. If you've seen the pics I uploaded you're probably know what I'm talking about... Waste on the ground, broken window, broken walls, toilets that cannot be used because nobody seems to be cleaning them and so on. Well, this discussion about the bad condition of the building(s) has been going on for many years now. But two weeks ago in another building of the faculty of the "sciencias sociales" something heavy broke down from the wall and almost hit a girl seriously. Luckily she wasn't hurt badly but this event made the students and docents of the UBA even more angry and willing to fight.
Secondly they're fighting for (better) salary of the docents. Many docents here are working voluntarily without getting any money at all (I talked to an Argentinian girl who told me it's a prestige for people to be a docent at the UBA and for that reason they do it even voluntarily). Also those docents that earn money, don't get enough. The problem is that the inflation rate in Argentina is pretty high (I heard people saying something between 15-30%!!!) but the salary of the docents are not getting higher referred to the inflation rate. Also they want to have a "edificio único". This means that they would like to get one building for the faculty of "sciencias sociales" because at the moment this faculty has four buildings distributed all over the city. In order to work together or to realize projects together it's necessary to have one building and that's what they're claiming, too.
(if you're interested, read more on this blog: http://www.edificiounicoya.blogspot.com/)
These are the main reasons. To achieve their goals students and docents together are having "public classes" in the middle of the streets, demonstration, blocking streets and they make a chaos at the buildings of the UBA putting chairs and tables everywhere to stop anybody to enter the building.


To those of you that understand Spanish (dale, David y Simone!) and to those that would like to get at least an impression of what's happening here and how they're fighting, have a look at this video made from UBA students (and by the way you can listen to the real Buenos Aires slang! :-)




1 comment:

Simone said...

De nuevo: Hola :)
Lo que cuentas sobre tu universidad me asombra y me duele. He visto lo mismo en Chile: Allá el problema es que las universidades estatales no tienen mucho dinero porque en ellas no estudia tanta gente rica como en las universidades privadas. Pero tan rotas como la UBA no son (por lo menos las que vi yo). Vi el video y me di cuenta que la canción es de la banda "La vela puerca" - una de mis bandas favoritas (es de Uruguay). En cuanto al accento argentino: Scho (yo), el Mascho (mayo).. lo encuentro super divertido ;) Pero puedo decirte que se entiende bien a los argentinos - mejor que a los chilenos aunque los chilenos hablan más despacios.
Entonces, espero que logran que se mejoren las condiciones para ustedes: Buena suerte y hasta la victoria siempre ;)