WORK|OUT European Students’ Review

— WORK|OUT SPECIAL —

LA GRANDE PROTESTA

| Beyond the borders nearly unnoticed most of Italy’s universities have been occupied or invaded by demostrations from October to December 2005.

Not only students, but also a huge part of the teaching staff protested against the “riforma Moratti”, the latest adjustment of the Italian university system to the guidelines of the Bologna Process, on the streets or the university campuses. The reason: instead of an improvement of the disastrous situation inside the universities, the reform applied serious changes in favour of students from wealthy families and without regard to the urgent need of a real reform that would improve the quality of teaching, learning and research.

An emblematic sign for the government’s depreciatory attitude towards the demostrators — the concerned citizens — has been the following occurence:

foto and audio: www.corriere.it

The delegate of Alleanza Nazionale, Daniela Santanchè, answers with the fuck finger to the shouting demonstrators in front of the Montecitorio (the Parliament) in Rome, October 26, 2005.

Nevertheless, the students of Italy have shown their awareness of the critical processes taking place in their country, and in their opinion the “reform” of (higher) education is part of a dangerous project of neoliberalism whose effects are not only an unjust enrichment on one side of the society, but it inflicts a serious harm to their and the coming generations’ education, culture and chances on the labour market.

WORK|OUT gathered testimonies, analyses and reports from the demonstrations and occupations in Rome, Bologna, Milan and Genoa.

For those who desire to know more, a main reference and coordination point of the Great Protest in Italy have been the left wing students of Florence: www.ricercata.com. (tb)