Who represent the SciTech students?

3 May, 2011

The interest to the election to Uppsala Student Union's council was low once again. Just above 1600 of the unions over 24000 members bothered to vote. It seems easy to get engaged and elected to the council but even so only 3 of the 41 seats was taken from students with a background in science or technology. With this background there is a natural path for us at Uppsala Union of Science and Engineering Students (short UTN) to work towards to become the formal representative for the students at the faculty of Science and Technology.

Uppsala Union of Science and Engineering Students is despite the name not a formal student union but instead an non-profit organization for all the students at the faculty of science and technology in Uppsala. But even so the purpose and the work with UTN is to act safeguard the interests of the students, just as a formal student union.

We believe that the the interest of the students at the faculty would be better taken care of if UTN was selected to be the formal student union for this part of the university. UTN would then have easier to make there voice heard compared to the situation today as a “shadow union” (compare to shadow PhD). The questions and issues that bother the students at our faculty is often forgotten by Uppsala Student Union because of there composition.

UTN has taken large steps in the direction of becoming a formal union and is now sometimes recognized as the formal represent of students at the faculty even if we just an non-profit organization. We was for example elected to be the referral body when the Swedish government investigated the issue of creating a more flexible system for study allowances. The thought of UTN as a formal student union is also more and more common and accepted in both the head of the students and at Uppsala University.

We are now looking forward to a new year of good cooperation with Uppsala Student Union and all other organization that cares about the student in Uppsala and all over Sweden. The cooperation with other organization is in the end the most important to care about the students, regardless if UTN is a formal represent or not.