Jul 7, 2016

Sing me, o Goddess, a University without students

     Let’s try to imagine a university without students... Now read the letter and you will understand why the students were stricken by an acute form of demotivation.
University without students Italian case Loving San Francisco
     "Sing me, o Goddess, the wrath of Peleus Achilles...". This opens the Iliad, one of the greatest poems of humanity, written by Homer. This is the traditional invocation to the Muse Calliope, who presided over the heroic poetry and is considered a source of inspiration. I made a change, "Sing me, o Goddess, the wrath of inaupicious student", to tell you the story of a shipwreck that can’t happens. But if we transposed the whole story in an imaginary world, it could take the tone of a joke. Once upon a time there were three teaching islands at the University of Bari, probably the largest of the academic archipelago. With the multimedia stations, each equipped with PC, they represented a safe haven for the "wolves of the Web", aims to research, write term papers or theses, write the Almalaurea form or fill out the applications for registration and enrollment. Students felt calm, they observed the rules, and in case of problems were assisted by a coach or a mentor. Then something changed, possibly due to a telluric disruption (forgive the irony, my faithful companion) and the islands have disappeared, or rather, one has been terminated (plexus of Beata Elia Street), another has no Internet connection and has been even lacking the printer (plexus of Q. Sella Road), the last one appears and disappears, a bit like the volcanic origin islands that are submerged and then re-emerge from the waters (Ateneo Palace, third floor, side Crisanzio Street).
     I’ve always been of the opinion that the student body represents the bottom of the food chain, but the status quo isn’t the best. In the moment you could glimpse the silhouette of the last island, the last possible landing, there was found only at the mercy of the current, time dragged by it, now rejected by the undertow, but always surrounded by many acres of opened ocean.
     To make shipwreck would at least an island, even the most deserted or infested with giant lizards, for not being pretentious, just a rock in the middle of the sea.
     As you can see, we have the resources at homeland, but we leave them in a state of neglect, in fact now the didactic islands are very similar to the sequestration locals. And the thing has been running for already two years.
     The undersigned, in full possession of her mental faculties as well as sarcastic, has granted the desire of those who wanted that I extract the pen from its sheath to know the sad reality of the students. Appertain to me a desire too: I don’t want that this become a poem to be handed down through the centuries, I prefer solutions rather than a diachronic fame.
     It spent time, but today goes missing only the island of Beata Elia Street. 
     Source: "La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno", an italian newspaper, August 3, 2010, p. 20.

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