University students need to learn from the experience and assemblage of the history of university struggles before them; for example, MSGSÜ students need to refresh their memories by learning about their own past.
*Lila Celiloğlu
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Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (MSGSÜ) is an important university in the history of university struggles. Today, the oppressive policies implemented by the appointed rector Handan İnci, combined with the gradual weakening of mechanisms in which university students can raise their voices against the problems they experience, make the problems at MSGSÜ invisible within the university struggle. Neither can MSGSÜ students see that the issues they experience and the difficulties they encounter when they try to cope with them are not unique to them, nor do these problems enter the agenda of other university students and produce results such as creating public opinion or showing solidarity between universities. This ‘‘isolated’’ state of MSGSÜ makes it difficult for students to learn from universities where the struggle is more developed and from the experiences of the student movement.
We talked to Zeynep, Sude and Gamze about how a year at MSGSÜ went. The events within the university in the past year are endless. The department students gathered to collect petitions against the Graphic Design Department, moving to an unsuitable building and dismissing academic staff; the library closing time brought forward; the conservatory students starting to study in container classrooms placed in the schoolyard due to lack of space; the sudden shut down of the Ortaköy Girls’ Dormitory, the only dormitory belongs to school, at the beginning of the semester due to the “need for an educational space”…
When we asked, “What do you think is the most important problem in the school?” Gamze mentioned that the classrooms were freezing, the radiators, which already did very little heat inside, were turned off early, and, for example, they had to sit in their coats during the 17:00 lessons. Sude said that while the applications for the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Credit and Dormitories Institution dormitories were closed, the decision to close the school dormitory very shortly before the term started was postponed due to the reactions. However, she still thinks it is one of the biggest problems and that it is challenging for students to move into an apartment under current conditions.
According to Zeynep, the biggest problem of last year is that conservatory students are taking classes in containers, which makes students feel humiliated; she continues:
“After all, they have worked so hard, deserved to be here and come to this school, but they are not treated as they deserve; they are not getting the education they deserve.”
The problem they think has become the most controversial issue at school is the early closing time of the library. They say all students are concerned about this and want the library to be open 24/7, not just during midterm weeks. The fact that decisions about the functions of the campuses and how they will be used are not made in a planned and consistent way that prioritises the needs of students and departments and that neither faculty members nor students are included in these decision-making processes makes students’ educational lives full of uncertainty and ready to be turned upside down by sudden top-down decisions.
Even when MSGSÜ students talk about many hot topics at their university, their conversations always end with “Nothing will happen at our university.” Gamze thinks that the world of conservatory and fine arts students, who comprise a significant part of the school, is entirely different, that there is no room for objection or struggle, and that students are mainly indifferent to problems. Zeynep, on the other hand, compares MSGSÜ to METU or IU and says that since their university does not have such a history regarding university struggle, therefore it can not exist today. Sude, on the other hand, says that they cannot unite within the university; they need spaces that bring all students together and allow each student to participate easily. She thinks that the actions attempted to be taken at MSGSÜ are not announced enough, and moreover, since most of the time they are not demonstrations in which all students partake jointly, they are weak and do not have an impact. When it comes to university struggle, how and by what means it is possible to raise a voice and react becomes a necessary point to be solved.
Another dimension of the government’s attack on universities is the destruction of their traditions and social and cultural structure, which creates amnesia in the students, who are the most active element of the university. That is precisely why university students need to learn from the experience and assemblage of the history of the university struggle before them; for example, MSGSÜ students need to refresh their memories by learning about their own past. One of the most important achievements in the history of the student movement is the Student Representative Council (SRC). Setting out with the aim of organising a strong SRC that is democratically run and around which students unite, which will enable university students to demand a say in the management of the university through representatives they elect, starting from their departments, and to stand together against problems, can untie this knot.
