went unnoticed until last week a student took her rage to the Polytechnic University of Milan. Quickly other university students followed her and also planted their tents. Only then his voice began to be heardincreasingly higher, in other large cities in Italy. Rome, Bologna, Cagliari, Pavia, Padua, Perugia, Venice, Florence and Bari are some of those who have joined in recent days. All united with a main message: the complaint by the high rental prices. A situation, they say, that is suffocating the student world.
Gathered around the movement ‘I’ll change Rotta’ (Change route) and some movements of the Italian extra-parliamentary left, the Italian demonstrators have exposed a market that, they denounce, no longer guarantees the right to study. Therefore, they ask for structural changes. To begin with: legislations that set affordable rents for students and more state funds for houses for most vulnerable students.
“The rent problem is an old problem. But in the last year the situation has gotten enormously worse because of inflation and the diversion of funds to the arms industry”denounces Sara Frioni, a 20-year-old student of Political Science at La Sapienza in Rome. “In RomeFor a shared room, they can ask you up to 400 euros; for an individual, some 500-600 euro. In Milanfor 20 square meters, you can pay up to 900 euro a month. And access to a state residence for students is practically impossible, “she details.
collapsed ceilings
The student world has seen for a long time how politics makes it sleeve cuts. In some centers of the country, the facilities are literally falling apart. He assembly hall ceiling of the University of Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia, collapsed last October. At the University of La Sapienza itself, one of the largest university temples in Italy, the plastering of a study room of the Faculty of Letters has also come off in recent months.
For this reason, it is not excluded that a protest that began in the high rental prices escalate into something else, as happened with Occupy Wall Street 12 years ago. “Why doesn’t the State study, for example, a plan that includes a rent for students who need it? That money can also come from organizations, such as Leonardo (a company in the defense sector), which benefit from the research carried out by the University,” suggests Frioni.
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She, along with 40 other students, have been the first of the protest. since last tuesday they spend day and night in front of the University of La Sapienza waiting for answers. A rebellion to which now other young people have joined who do the same at the University of Tor Vergata and in front of the Ministry of Education in the Italian capital. “Without a house, there is no future”, has been read on banners in other cities.
And something has moved. On Thursday, the Government of Giorgia Meloni announced the unlocking of 660 million Euros earmarked for new dormitories for students. What, for the moment, has calmed the spirits of the students who live in some cities. But not all.