MOVIMENTO ESTUDANTIL, GESTÃO DEMOCRÁTICA E AUTONOMIA NA UNIVERSIDADE (original) (raw)

This paper discusses the involvement and contribution of the student movement (ME) to the construction of autonomy and democratic management of the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). The movement for the democratization of management was initiated in 1984 by representative organizations of the three segments of the university community, ie, students, teachers and employees, which resulted in the first democratic reform of this institution. The autonomy granted by the State Government in 1989 to the state universities, namely Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) and UNESP, has established itself as an aspect of democratic management. This democratization movement was taken up explicitly in 2007 by state universities, in response to a series of decrees issued by the Governor José Serra. In this context, this paper aims to verify the overall intervention and the ME contribution to the construction of autonomy and democratic management of Unesp. The specific objectives are to analyze the literature and documentation available on the subject; check the development of autonomy and democratic management of Unesp in the specified period, as well as its current stage, with regard to student participation; identifying the party and independent expressions of ME and understand what are the main developments of the concepts and practices related to autonomy and democratic management. The procedures for data collection were guided by the research literature, documentary research, application of semi-structured interviews with students who participated in this process, and systematic and direct observation of the student forums. From these objectives and procedures it will be concluded that students, who go through a process of intellectual work, put themselves in the process of historical transformation of the university and demonstrated, depending on the situation, their ability to decide on its working process and on the production of knowledge. From the 2000s, the ME starts a process of refusal of delegation of power to institutionalized forms of representation. Thus, the UNESP’s ME in 2007 sought new forms of organization, through participation and direct democracy. The activity of ME was essential for the realization of the movement that managed to reverse substantial content of the decrees that interfered with university autonomy. However, the ME acts has been changed in a defensive sense, when the segment is attacked, unable to express and to propose in advance your management and autonomy project. Even so, the students' struggle for autonomy, associated with forms of direct participation, constitute itself as a resumption of the students towards the power to manage it and for a university project that has as purpose to assist those who finance it: the workers.