In the past two weeks Italian Uni has been a turmoil due to various protests and demonstration about the new Governament Reform, which is trying to change (one more time) the italian uni system (which anyway everybody more or less agrees never worked properly).

Even here in Florence, and in particular in the Uni section of Novoli, some people have been trying to squat in some buildings and organize some "social-courses" talking about different issues with a (supposed to be) free and honest point of view on the reform, on politics, society and the world situation.

I'm not going to get myself into the debate about this reform, so much as been said about it. But it's interesting to share how sometimes (especially in Italy) the same system that some people are trying to change is offering opportunities to improve itself, but being so busy in PROTESTING, we just can't see 'em.

I'm talking about last saturday, when the Novoli Uni Area was hosting at the same time a protest in a "occupied building" and few metres further the Economy Faculty was hosting the "8th Global Conference on Business & Economics", a very interesting conference with lecturers from all over the world debating on issues such as international economy, social issues and business, high level environmental awareness in education and even the need of university reforms in other european countries.

For example I can't skip to report the speech of David Marcinko, titled "Enhancing future business leaders environmental awareness", in which he presented a great paper about how the business world doesn't include environmental and social issues in the value chain of investments; the idea is therefore to teach future business leaders how to include sustainability into business plans.

As well, it's been quite interesting to hear another speech from Gabriella Keczer talking about University issues in Hungury and about the need of a deep change. Even more interesting was to realize that most of the problems listed by the lecturer were so much alike the situation we have in Italy. The only difference... was that Keczer's paper talked about how hungarian teachers agreed on many issues (such as the need of external influences on univerisities) which are the key problems in todays' italian reform;

The point is: no one from the next building attended to the conference, and the only way the students tought to partecipate to the event was attaching a banner saying: "privatize university is not the answer". A little hollow, don't you think?

Today Giuseppe Veltri, a very good italian blogger, talked about Italy as the "rubber country" (freely translated from "il paese di gomma"), i.e. a country that is capable to beat off any attempt of change or improvement.

This is the perfect example. People shouting that the system doesn't face the real problems of education and society and in the next building international level debates on the same issues.

This is just everyday's life, the same reality that those students are (so laudly) trying to reject as "unable to teach the truth or face the real need of change". Sometimes it seems that more than learning and understanding for some people is important to "play revolution".

The opportunities to understand and learn are just all around us. Especially on a University level. Just keep looking for them.