Demonstration and occupation of the administration buillding of the University of Helsinki
If you're on my f-list, then please read the locked entry as it has more photos.
Boy do I have something exciting for you people. I took part in a demonstration yesterday against reforms to the Finnish Universities Act, and then I got dragged along to occupy the administration buillding of the University of Helsinki. :o We occupied the building through the night and the sit-in stopped around 10AM this morning and I got home to sleep. I had a lot of fun and took part in something historical that happens maybe once in two decades at the University. We also made it to the national news (not me personally). You can read the news, in English, here. Finns can read more here.
I took a lot of photos so I'm going to tell the story through photos. There's about 60 photos in total.
The sing translates roughly as "Reform the University reform".
People waited for the demonstration to start in front of Porthania, central campus.
One of the organizers.
The sing says "This is what autonomy looks like".
We are concerned that the reform will enable business life to dictate what is researched and so forth.
This sing says "You can bear responsibility with a group" (very rough translation).
One other concern is that the democracy inside the University will be undermined by the reform.
Especially the voice of the students won't get heard as well.
This one reads: "Humanist/art student and proud of it". We marched after this one.
Walking along the Aleksanterinkatu street, one of the main commercial streets at the center of Helsinki.
About 1000-1500 people took part in the demonstration.
That's a lot around here as demonstrations don't draw all that many people.
One of the organizers is shouting catchphrases through a megaphone.
We were repeating them as we marched.
That's Stockman, one of the two big department stores at the center, on the background.
Here we're marching on the Mannerheimintie street, biggest street going through the center of Helsinki.
The yellow sign says "The evolution of the University, the end of critical thinking".
We stopped at one of the intersections for maybe about 10 minutes.
People got out of the trams because the trams were stuck.
Re-introducing the red torches.
Those two police cars kept the rear.
Red torches and a tram.
Marching back to the center of campus.
There was a really good atmosphere at the demonstration so it was a lot of fun, even though it was pretty cold outside.
These are all campus buildings here.
Back at Porthania. During the demonstration they played music from the speakers as well as shouting catchphrases.
That boring looking grey building at the back is the administrative building that the demonstrators occupied a couple of minutes after I took this photo around 4-5 PM. Jiji literally dragged me inside with the first people going inside. :p But it was fun so I stayed. It hadn't been planned. I was supposed to Study Giddens and go to my Pilates class, but instead I ended up occupying a building. ^^;
Inside the building we walked up the stairs and tried all the doors, but only the ones on the 4th floor were open so we went in there. The lobby was absolutely packed with people, but I have no photos of that. I was still kinda unsure at that point, if I was going to stay and if the people there would mind people photographed.
Then me, Jiji and one other woman went to buy some food and coffee from the store with money collected for the demonstration. We also carried the coffee maker and water boiler from the students coffee room at our Institute here as the kitchen on the 4th floor was locked. The free food and drink was set in this smaller conference room.
These fruits were a donation for the sit-in, as well as many other of the free food that we got.
This is the conference room on the fourth floor. Meetings and workgroups were held here among other places.
Here we're watching a news clip about the demonstration.
These people were part of the team maintaining the opiskelijatoiminta.net site.
People sitting around the 4th floor lobby. There were something under 100 people occupying the building at this point of the evening.
At times it felt like I was at a really weird LAN party. :p There were that many laptops around.
We had free access to go out and in of the building,
so we could go to the store to buy food and drink and nicotine-addicts could get their fix. :p
I liked the art on this sign. It's demonstrating the life of a student.
Back inside.
A meeting about the conclusions of the workgroups that were held that night.
We had a live Skype connection to some student activists at Tampere.
They were pretty drunk but supported our sit-in. We sang Gaudeamus Igitur to them. :p
Security camera access denied! This was at the lobby of the fourth floor.
The doormen came to take the sticker off once, but someone just put another sticker there so they gave up.
The rectors office at the lobby of the 4th floor. The tag says "resign".
There was a lot of talk about in what condition we wanted to leave the building for the people coming there,
but in the end we cleaned our own mess in the morning, took the empty bottles and trash away etc.
Wrecking the place wouldn't have helped our cause.
Hitler moustache. It's not on the actual painting.
New wallpaper on the conference room's computer. I believe that it's Raimo Sailas, the Secretary of State.
This woman held a sound healing workshop in the middle of the night, which I took part in.
It was pretty random, but cool. I got to try throat singing. :p
In the morning we offered coffee, tea and some cookies - and a pamflet - to the people who came to work to the building.
Most people just said no thanks though. :p It's like 7-8 AM in this photo, at the 1st floor lobby.
We had breakfast ourselves as well.
I felt sorry for the two doormen who had to stay up all night after their normal shift,
just sitting there being bored. But they were nice men.
I dunno who had brought the roses.
Art photo of art.
The rector came to talk with us in the 1st floor lobby for an hour in the morning when he came to work. I think that he was a sympathetic fellow, but he's kind of like a politician because of his position. At least he seemed to be glad that there was finally some public debate about the University reform. But other than that what he had to say didn't give much hope to us. I don't get how some of the people were still awake enough to be able to discuss a reform to a law with someone like the rector. Just listening took a lot of concentration on my part.
The rector had been part of the occupation of the old student house in 1968, so he kinda understood what we were all about with the sit-in. :p And he had anticipated that something like this might happen after the demonstration and had told to leave the doors leading to the fourth floor unlocked as he trusted that we could behave. That was cool.
Activists talking with the rector.
After the rector had to leave we felt like it was a good enough ending for the occupation of the building. So we took the stuff that we had loaned back to our Institute's coffee room and then we headed home. I got back home around 11AM. I was really tired but I only slept like 5 hours once I got home. Sorting and posting these photos has taken most of this night.
My days are rarely as exciting as yesterday was. The sit-in was just totally new to me. It was a lot of fun as well. The next demonstration's going to be on the 13th of next month.
Boy do I have something exciting for you people. I took part in a demonstration yesterday against reforms to the Finnish Universities Act, and then I got dragged along to occupy the administration buillding of the University of Helsinki. :o We occupied the building through the night and the sit-in stopped around 10AM this morning and I got home to sleep. I had a lot of fun and took part in something historical that happens maybe once in two decades at the University. We also made it to the national news (not me personally). You can read the news, in English, here. Finns can read more here.
I took a lot of photos so I'm going to tell the story through photos. There's about 60 photos in total.
The sing translates roughly as "Reform the University reform".
People waited for the demonstration to start in front of Porthania, central campus.
One of the organizers.
The sing says "This is what autonomy looks like".
We are concerned that the reform will enable business life to dictate what is researched and so forth.
This sing says "You can bear responsibility with a group" (very rough translation).
One other concern is that the democracy inside the University will be undermined by the reform.
Especially the voice of the students won't get heard as well.
This one reads: "Humanist/art student and proud of it". We marched after this one.
Walking along the Aleksanterinkatu street, one of the main commercial streets at the center of Helsinki.
About 1000-1500 people took part in the demonstration.
That's a lot around here as demonstrations don't draw all that many people.
One of the organizers is shouting catchphrases through a megaphone.
We were repeating them as we marched.
That's Stockman, one of the two big department stores at the center, on the background.
Here we're marching on the Mannerheimintie street, biggest street going through the center of Helsinki.
The yellow sign says "The evolution of the University, the end of critical thinking".
We stopped at one of the intersections for maybe about 10 minutes.
People got out of the trams because the trams were stuck.
Re-introducing the red torches.
Those two police cars kept the rear.
Red torches and a tram.
Marching back to the center of campus.
There was a really good atmosphere at the demonstration so it was a lot of fun, even though it was pretty cold outside.
These are all campus buildings here.
Back at Porthania. During the demonstration they played music from the speakers as well as shouting catchphrases.
That boring looking grey building at the back is the administrative building that the demonstrators occupied a couple of minutes after I took this photo around 4-5 PM. Jiji literally dragged me inside with the first people going inside. :p But it was fun so I stayed. It hadn't been planned. I was supposed to Study Giddens and go to my Pilates class, but instead I ended up occupying a building. ^^;
Inside the building we walked up the stairs and tried all the doors, but only the ones on the 4th floor were open so we went in there. The lobby was absolutely packed with people, but I have no photos of that. I was still kinda unsure at that point, if I was going to stay and if the people there would mind people photographed.
Then me, Jiji and one other woman went to buy some food and coffee from the store with money collected for the demonstration. We also carried the coffee maker and water boiler from the students coffee room at our Institute here as the kitchen on the 4th floor was locked. The free food and drink was set in this smaller conference room.
These fruits were a donation for the sit-in, as well as many other of the free food that we got.
This is the conference room on the fourth floor. Meetings and workgroups were held here among other places.
Here we're watching a news clip about the demonstration.
These people were part of the team maintaining the opiskelijatoiminta.net site.
People sitting around the 4th floor lobby. There were something under 100 people occupying the building at this point of the evening.
At times it felt like I was at a really weird LAN party. :p There were that many laptops around.
We had free access to go out and in of the building,
so we could go to the store to buy food and drink and nicotine-addicts could get their fix. :p
I liked the art on this sign. It's demonstrating the life of a student.
Back inside.
A meeting about the conclusions of the workgroups that were held that night.
We had a live Skype connection to some student activists at Tampere.
They were pretty drunk but supported our sit-in. We sang Gaudeamus Igitur to them. :p
Security camera access denied! This was at the lobby of the fourth floor.
The doormen came to take the sticker off once, but someone just put another sticker there so they gave up.
The rectors office at the lobby of the 4th floor. The tag says "resign".
There was a lot of talk about in what condition we wanted to leave the building for the people coming there,
but in the end we cleaned our own mess in the morning, took the empty bottles and trash away etc.
Wrecking the place wouldn't have helped our cause.
Hitler moustache. It's not on the actual painting.
New wallpaper on the conference room's computer. I believe that it's Raimo Sailas, the Secretary of State.
This woman held a sound healing workshop in the middle of the night, which I took part in.
It was pretty random, but cool. I got to try throat singing. :p
In the morning we offered coffee, tea and some cookies - and a pamflet - to the people who came to work to the building.
Most people just said no thanks though. :p It's like 7-8 AM in this photo, at the 1st floor lobby.
We had breakfast ourselves as well.
I felt sorry for the two doormen who had to stay up all night after their normal shift,
just sitting there being bored. But they were nice men.
I dunno who had brought the roses.
Art photo of art.
The rector came to talk with us in the 1st floor lobby for an hour in the morning when he came to work. I think that he was a sympathetic fellow, but he's kind of like a politician because of his position. At least he seemed to be glad that there was finally some public debate about the University reform. But other than that what he had to say didn't give much hope to us. I don't get how some of the people were still awake enough to be able to discuss a reform to a law with someone like the rector. Just listening took a lot of concentration on my part.
The rector had been part of the occupation of the old student house in 1968, so he kinda understood what we were all about with the sit-in. :p And he had anticipated that something like this might happen after the demonstration and had told to leave the doors leading to the fourth floor unlocked as he trusted that we could behave. That was cool.
Activists talking with the rector.
After the rector had to leave we felt like it was a good enough ending for the occupation of the building. So we took the stuff that we had loaned back to our Institute's coffee room and then we headed home. I got back home around 11AM. I was really tired but I only slept like 5 hours once I got home. Sorting and posting these photos has taken most of this night.
My days are rarely as exciting as yesterday was. The sit-in was just totally new to me. It was a lot of fun as well. The next demonstration's going to be on the 13th of next month.