Intoxication by politic action

Over the last weeks, I have become rather sick of all the tedious everyday requirements of my office. I had to deal with way too much closed-mindedness from the university's administration, politicians and also, I have to admit, my colleagues as well as with the ever-mounting pile of paperwork.

Thankfully, this has changed this week. Once again, things are in motion. In the whole of Europe, over 30 universities and colleges have been squatted. We have squatted our big lecture hall two days ago after a plenary meeting of all interested students (unfortunately, only about 800 showed up). At first it looked like the university wanted to kick us out with help from the police, but by now they have accepted both the squat as well as the fact that no lectures will be held in the hall as long as we are staying there.

The last two days have been a lot of stress, of course and I spent pretty much all of yesterday answering phone calls from the press and giving interviews. I have only slept four hours per night and spent last night curled up on a sofa at our students' café (I really celebrated the shower I took an hour ago). However instead of stressing me out, the last two days were intoxicating. Elation comes from the feeling that things are finally in motion again and that we have comrades in the whole of Europe (though it is still mainly an austrian and german phenomenon). Knowing that you are not just some weird left-winger sitting in his office trying to work against the many faults in our educational system but that there are indeed lots of people who share your analysis of the situation and your willingness to fight is great.

For my american readers I will give a few basic informations about the protests:

We had a week of protest in summer in Germany. Unfortunately almost all we got were friendly words. A few weeks ago, students in Austria started to squat their universities in protest against the plans for new reforms of the austrian university-system. Main points were the terribly flawed change from the old system of academic grades to a perverted version of a bachelor/master-system (which basically turned university into just another type of school where you have almost no free choice of what to hear), the lack of funding for and the lack of democracy inside the universities, tuition-fees, the terribly selective school-system etc.
Last week, german students (as well as polish, british and french) followed suit.
We share most of the problems the austrians have.
Also, there are of course always the specific problems of each individual university.

So on wednesday, we finally decided to squat as well. We have organized into several small groups, each responsible for some specific task. There is the food-group which so far has provided us with great breakfast and dinner, the public-relations-group, which works ever more efficient as the time goes on (yesterday it still was a rather bumpy ride), the culture-group (organizing showing films, concerts, and the like) etc.
There is a meeting of all squatters (and everyone else who is interested) twice a day, discussing everything that is on the agenda at that point.
In the background we members of the student administration are there for everything that crops up (keeping in touch with the university's administration, or helping out with megaphone, press-contacts, computers, printers etc.).

So far it all works more or less splendidly.

There will be a big demonstration on tuesday. We will see what happens after that.

I am just one very happy camper right now. Or at least a man in a tent who enjoys himself quite tremendously ;-)