Graffitti calls out elitism of University students union amid ‘complaints about lethargy’

A moral panic over the apparent crisis of “lethargy” among University of Malta students prompted by newspapers reports on a foreword to a legal publication by former Chief Justice Joseph Said Pullicino, has been given short shrift by a student body that has been on the frontline of critical thinking and action.

Studenti Graffitti, the student wing of the left-wing activists organisation Moviment Graffitti – and a Senate-recognised organisation since the 1990s – said it had been ever-present on the University campus as one of the leading voices of change and critical thinking.

“Year after year we have seen a University students’ union which promises action but takes none. The growing elitist attitude within the student body is worrying as it makes it harder for students to communicate with them. The student body has become a privileged club, where only friends of friends are allowed to have a say in the running of the organisation,” Studenti Graffitti charged in a missive that called out the mealy-mouthed complaints on ‘student lethargy’.

“Studenti Graffitti have consistently spoken about the lack of new ideas and impetus to grow an organic political student movement. 

“In last year’s - Vuċi Ġdida - Kokka Convention - organised by the same KSU, members from Studenti Graffitti pointed out several structural issues within the student body that were leading to a growing distance between students and their supposed union.

“Some of the points mentioned were the bureaucracy and lack of initiative in taking strong political decisions, lack of involvement of students in key decisions taken by KSU, insensitivity to the socio-economic issues faced by several students and the lack of will in tackling them. We also noted that certain student organisations were being sponsored by big businesses which stifles their work.” 

But Graffitti said that the concerns of students at Malta’s national university – the quality of lectures, assessment methods, and their own personal economic problems – were being neglected by student organisations “often absent in defending the students, instead appeasing the respective faculties.”

Studenti Graffitti called for a systematic and attitudinal change to KSU if the university was to have “a robust and fervent political student movement is by listening to students and taking real political action.”

The University students council (KSU) is historically dominated by candidates aligned to Christian-democratic union Studenti Demokristjani Maltin, which is contested in regular elections by the Pulse student union. They are informally associated to recruitment bases touching on the Nationalist and Labour Parties respectively. Pulse enjoys representation in students’ councils at the Junior College (KSJC) and MCAST (KSM).