The most representative space is the Senate, even though students are not familiar enough with it to take it into account as an essential body in the university’s decision-taking process. Unions are also an essential tool for coordinating students, and they do very important work.

In addition, there is the Student Council (CEUPF), the body that aims to represent all the university’s students. To this end, it has to coordinate all the other student representation bodies. As with the Senate, students are currently fairly ignorant about this body. We need to find a way to get students more involved.

The most representative space is the Senate, even though students are not familiar enough with it to take it into account as an essential body in the university’s decision-taking process.

Yes, I am now a delegate for third-year students. I ran for the first time my first year. I chose to run because people encouraged me to do it and because I did not want the position to remain vacant. When a class does not have a representative, it automatically harms everyone.

At first, I was a little reluctant to take on the position. I did not know if it would entail more work than I could handle, if it would be too big a commitment or if it would impact my academic life. In the end, it has been a very enriching task, allowing me to serve my classmates on a daily basis.

I think the Senate should be the university’s main forum for discussion, mainly because it is the statutorily and historically recognized meeting point between the university’s government and its teaching staff, administrative and service staff and students. It should thus be a key space for debate. But voter turnout and senate session attendance leave a lot to be desired. A lot of people at the university do not know what the Senate is or what decisions it takes, so all of this can be improved through better communication. Of course, the rest of the community has to be receptive and willing to take on their respective roles, right? We need to really raise awareness of the importance of the Senate and of the decisions it takes, and students need to learn to organize and bring motions to improve their daily life at the university.

The CEUPF is a body that makes decisions on behalf of the students. I think it is important to know and be able to influence all decision-taking bodies. I joined as a delegate, to add my voice and experience to the Student Council, which is the meeting place for representatives of the entire university.

I am a member of the Transparency Advisory Board and the Language Policy Committee. I think both are essential. The first is needed to democratize the university and oversee the government and resource management, but also to make visible all the data that needs to be public and that lets us know how the university is working. The second committee is also important, because I think language should be a top priority. Pompeu Fabra University does not always live up to its name; in some areas, the rate of Catalan lags far behind what would be desirable.

It is an exciting, attractive and, above all, ambitious initiative. It is an alliance between six European universities – Paris Seine, Brussels Vrije, Warwick, Ljubljana, Gothenburg and Pompeu Fabra – to respond to society’s needs and prepare the citizens of tomorrow to meet the challenges of this century.

The project, which has a long-term horizon, 2050, seeks to tackle all these challenges, unite Europe and make European universities more competitive. We need to increase European academic output, because that will be key to deciding who will lead, for example, the fourth industrial revolution.

It is an exciting, attractive and, above all, ambitious initiative. It is a project between six European universities to respond to society’s needs and prepare the citizens of tomorrow to meet the challenges of this century.

We need to think deeply about this concept. Given the problems in the European Union, and how fragile it is right now, we need to identify what has made us strong and leverage it. For me, one of the strengths of European education is the Erasmus project, which has brought the continent together and enabled student exchanges. These exchanges have, in turn, led to social, cultural and research exchanges. If we want to compete with American, Chinese, Korean and Japanese universities, we need to move towards a model that strengthens our competitive advantages.

Making one’s own language compatible with an internationalization project is one of the issues that EUTOPIA has to address today, with especial care and attention. We do not want to harm any language, whether Catalan or the language of any of the other universities. We need to study how to make languages compatible, beginning with the idea that we cannot give up our own.

When they first told us about EUTOPIA, at a Student Council meeting in October 2018, the project was not yet defined or anything. They were simply looking for a student to coordinate with students from other universities to start working on the project. It struck me as very interesting. In 2018, they held a seminar with representatives from all the universities, to work on the project. I thought it was very intriguing, especially because it is a long-term project. Taking a long-term view is key to defining a strategy that will make us stronger.

I do think that more student should get involved, and I think that they will. To date, the project has just been getting underway and very few students have got involved, mainly because it is not yet clear what role young people are to play.

However, students are expected to get involved in the governance and various working groups that make up the project. They need to get involved to build a strong alliance and to think about how to respond to the European challenges we all face.

Participating in a project like this can be very enriching, both personally and academically. Personally, sharing ideas with people from other universities and being part of the working groups is very positive. Nor do we ever lose sight of the academic dimension, since the working groups seek to use the knowledge acquired at university to provide answers. That is why it is important for students to get involved from the first to the fourth year, in order to provide different views and experiences and to find cross-cutting and representative solutions.