College only for the rich? What is at stake for the strikers in Jovita

Since Friday, December 8, a protest has been taking place in Poznań in defense of the dormitory of the Adam Mickiewicz University. Adam Mickiewicz. Student individuals have launched a sit-down strike. They oppose efforts by UAM authorities to privatize Jowita, the largest student house in downtown Poznań. With each passing hour, they are joined by people from all over Poland stocked with sleeping bags, clothes and food supplies. On Monday, December 11, some lecturers moved their classes to Jowita. They intend to stay in the building until they do.

Student loses, UAM gets rich

Rumors of plans to close Jowita had been circulating at the Poznan university for quite some time. They first appeared in 2013, in the context of the building’s poor technical condition. This spring, Jowita residents Paula Macioszek and Zofia Puzanow initiated a petition against the UAM authorities’ plans. It was signed by more than half of the people living in the student house. In response, UAM Chancellor Bogumiła Kaniewska announced on social media in April of this year that DS Jowita was to be closed (and, implicitly, turned over to private hands) in the 2023/2024 academic year.

Why is the university destroying its own resource? The answer is simple. The plot on which Jowita stands has a high market value due to its location in the heart of the city. Not surprisingly, it has long attracted the interest of private businessmen. Such places in urban centers are feeling the effects of gentrification the hardest – exorbitant rent prices and pressure to displace the poorest. The free market and „entrepreneurship“ are sacrosanct in Poland, which gives business permission to profit at the expense of the common good. Perhaps a new office building will soon stand on the site of Jowita. In a more optimistic scenario, the dormitory will begin to be managed by a private owner.

At an April meeting between UAM authorities and the student community in Jowita’s conference room, UAM Chancellor Bogumiła Kaniewska did not intend to participate in the debate, but rather to explain to the assembled people why the privatization of the dormitory was necessary. UAM Chancellor Marcin Wysocki kindly hinted to the students that they could live in a private dormitory after all. Speaking from a position of seniority, he seemed to see no difference between a state university dormitory and one managed by a private developer.

Meanwhile, the difference is colossal. The former exists to make education possible for people in smaller centers and in difficult financial situations. And the latter solely to maximize the owner’s profits. Which, by the way, usually makes it more profitable to rent fewer rooms, but to inflate rents. Simply put – private development is not a common good.

Jowita’s occupation is an expression of opposition not only to this particular decision by the UAM authorities to close the dormitory, but to the university’s entire anti-social policy, which only exacerbates the social problems of students. „We want the university, in the face of the housing crisis, to present us with concrete plans for the development and construction of more student housing,“ say people affiliated with the Student Housing Initiative and the Youth Circle of the Workers’ Initiative. Here are their demands:

1. „We demand a concrete plan to renovate DS Jowita and restore the building to its function as a public, low-cost dormitory.
2 We demand a concrete plan for the development of the university’s housing stock.
3 We demand public canteens and social rooms in the faculties.“

Jowita’s occupation has already become a symbol of the struggle for the right to public dormitories and social support from the university. Unfortunately, the affair at UAM is not the only illustration that the right to accessible and free education in Poland is just an empty slogan. Instead, it is part of a broader process of universities submitting to the rules of the free market and neglecting social support.

More cockroaches than students in dormitories

Another dorm affair took place at the University of Warsaw. A month before the start of this academic year, applicants or residents of Warsaw’s dormitories were made homeless overnight. Rooms were denied even to people who met the income criterion and had lived in the dorm since the beginning of their studies. All dormitory applications, regardless of when they were submitted, were not processed until after the third round of recruitment. This means that those concerned received their decisions on Friday, September 15. Beginning Monday, September 18, new tenants were to begin checking in. If someone stayed in a dormitory for the vacations, he had to vacate the room over the weekend.

In response to the scandal, the Youth Circle of the Workers’ Initiative and the Student Housing Initiative staged a protest on October 2, during the inauguration ceremony of the academic year at the Auditorium Maximum. After the protest, the Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs decided to speak with the demonstrators. students, Slawomir Zoltek, who was presented with the demands of the student movement. The university’s housing stock, cafeterias, social benefits and a revision of the rules for granting social support were rebuked.

Another protest took place on October 11 after talks with the UW pro-rector. It took the form of a mass sleepover at the Warsaw University Library in Powisle. „The university authorities denied you a dormitory? Sleeping in the BUW won’t deny you!“ – encouraged the Warsaw KMIP.

The overnight camp in the library received considerable media publicity, and drew the attention of university guards, who were brought in from all over campus. After the protest actions, places in the dormitories by some miracle were found. However, it was reported that the academic year and regular classes were already underway, and by then some people had managed to drop out.

According to Warsaw’s KMIP, UW dormitories currently accommodate only 5 percent. studying. The UW’s last dormitories, Zwirek i Muchomorek in Ochota, were completed 53 years ago, meaning that the university relies entirely on facilities built during the communist era. One dreads to think where we would live if it weren’t for the commune,“ comments Jakub Straszewski in Student Alert.

Pressure makes sense

Back in October, student individuals sent an open letter to UW authorities demanding that they counter the university’s anti-social policies that led to the crisis. After two weeks came a response and numerous promises, including. Opening a public cafeteria in the BUW and conducting a survey on. the material situation of male and female students by the team of the Education Quality Evaluation Laboratory.

In a time of housing crisis, inflation and junk contracts, with a shortage of dormitories and low-cost cafeterias, studying has become extreme multitasking and jumping between university responsibilities and gainful employment. After classes, male and female students suck at gastro, hotels, dishwashing, as couriers and a whole host of other „student“ jobs. According to a report by the Polish Bank Association, monthly student spending has doubled since 2017 and now stands at more than PLN 3,100. The challenge is no longer to get to college, but to combine study and work so that you can stay afloat.

We see the state in area after area retreating from its responsibility for society. The university, which should be a tool for leveling the playing field, is becoming an elite institution accessible only to the wealthiest – or at least those who can afford to rent on the open market. The idea that it could be accessible and open sounds subversive and utopian in neoliberal capitalism. It seems that the conclusion once formulated by the Open Committee for the Release of Éducational Spaces (OKUPÉ) founded at the University of Gdansk in 2009 still holds true: „A free university in a capitalist system is like a reading room in a prison – a nice place, but it doesn’t change much and you have to be privilegedx to have access to it.“

What can be done to make the university a welcoming space also for those who start from more difficult positions? Support the student movement, jointly block the progressive privatization and alliances of state institutions with big business, established at the expense of the weakest.

The most effective tools for putting pressure on the authorities are protests and strikes. As the example of April’s idle talks with UAM authorities shows, as long as the status quo is not challenged, there is no hope of being taken seriously. Student strike regulated by Article 106. The Higher Education Act is relatively easy to carry out – especially compared to a strike at a workplace.

But in addition to courage, appropriate tactics and the ability to speak the language of self-interest, effective pressure still requires visibility. The lack of cafeterias or dormitory closures is forcing more and more people to drop out of college, but it’s not always a hot enough topic for media attention.

**
Magda Borysławska – PhD in humanities (UW); received her doctorate on the persecution of homosexual men in the Third Reich; discourse scholar and Germanist working on the sociology of deviance, collective violence and moral panics, particularly as seen through critical discourse analysis. She has published in the journals „In Gremium. Studies in History, Culture and Politics,“ „German Studies/Studien zur Deutschkunde,“ „GENDER. Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft“, „Text and Discourse – text und discourse“, „Culture and Society“, „European Review“, „Acta Humana“ and „Gaismair-Jahrbuch“.