In its meeting last week, the Representative Council approved the new policy paper for the Student Union that guides all influencing work carried out by AYY. The reform saw the nine existing policy paper documents combined into one entity, while the policies were updated to offer solutions for modern-day challenges. It was quite a task, and the Board spent 20 hours in meetings before the proposal was ready.
The goals are not the creation of one brain; instead, a versatile selection of different parties was heard in connection with the reform. In addition to the Council, the Board and experts, opinions were given by e.g. AYY’s Representative Council Committees, the Chairs’ Council, the Campus Section and alumni from the Educational Policy sector. The membership was also heard by way of the open survey that was answerable throughout the summer. The Representative Council alone made 172 alteration suggestions. The feeds were excellent, and a large part of them made it into the final policy paper.
Altogether new influencing goals include e.g. themes related to information society, arts policy and equality. As per its policy paper, AYY promotes, for example, the increase of the valuation of arts fields’ experts in society, clear practices for interfering with harassment occurring in the Aalto community, and free software.
Of course, not everything was renewed. The themes of free education that AYY has advocated for a long time, for example, remained the same: only accessible and equal higher education enables the best of the best in society to be discovered, regardless of their socio-economic background. The main ideas related to students’ subsistence also remained the same: AYY continues to promote the construction of students’ subsistence in a way the enables them to meaningfully gain work experience from their own field alongside studying, but also so that the level of financial aid is sufficient without earned income. In a perfect world, the subsistence of all citizens would be ensured with a basic income.
The policy paper will naturally not magically change the world on its own. This is where the real work begins, with the Student Union having to influence Aalto, Espoo and the rest of society to turn its policies into reality.
The brand-new policy paper is available for exploration here.
Tapio Hautamäki
Vice Chair of the Board