The meeting of the VMU Student Parliament took place

January 19 The meeting of the Student Parliament of VDU was held, which was chaired by the chairperson elected at the previous meeting - Gabrielė Jonuskaitė. During the meeting, the future provisional procedure for the presidential election of the VDU SA was presented, the decisions of the working group of the parliamentary canteen on the conditions for the selection of the manager of the canteen and the proposal for changes to the working regulations of the Student Parliament were presented. Direct presidential elections, doctoral students' club and other issues were discussed.

The board submitted the procedure for the election of the president of VDU SA for approval by the parliament. As last year, the collection of signatures is canceled due to the still present COVID-19 pandemic in the country and limited contact between students. Candidates for the presidency will have to submit an application, motivation letter and operational guidelines by e-mail. by post The election procedure was approved by consensus. You can familiarize yourself with the election procedure here.

Martynas Butkus presented the proposal of the Canteen working group regarding the selection conditions for the manager of the canteen in the multifunctional science and study center of VMU. The most important things in the proposal were related to the food, so that the offered dishes were complete and met various dietary needs, and that the price of food for VMU students and employees was not higher than 3 EUR. for other visitors - no more than 5 EUR. Also, the manager should rent the canteen premises for a nominal fee and allow the existing space to be used for the needs of the university community after the canteen's opening hours. Apart from the price of food, the most debated among members of parliament was the condition that the manager of the canteen must ensure that at least half of the workers in the canteen are members of the VMU community. During the voting, it was decided to approve the document by deleting the last item.

Another question raised by M. Butkaus was about the direct elections of the president of VDU SA. A few years ago, there was a debate on this issue in parliament, but it was forgotten until a working group was formed to examine it. During the meeting, the parliamentarians did not decide on a specific plan of action regarding the direct elections of the president of VDU SA, but they promised to hold an informal meeting and discuss the importance of this issue during it. Another issue closely related to the presidential election is the amendments to the work regulations of the VMU Student Parliament, which focused mainly on the parliamentary election procedure. In the amendments presented by Martynas Butkaus, proposals to reduce the number of parliamentarians and to allow individual candidates and lists of candidates to stand for parliament caused a lot of debate. Therefore, it was decided to vote on the relevance of this issue. During the voting on the relevance of the VMU Student Parliament election reform, the parliamentarians decided that this issue is not relevant (19 members of parliament out of 29 who voted spoke against).

The representatives of doctoral students raised the issue of foreign language learning opportunities for doctoral students at the last parliamentary session. During this meeting, Andrius Šmitas presented this issue in more detail and said that if there is no desire to create separate foreign language modules for doctoral students, they could be given the opportunity to learn a foreign language together with VMU employees, since doctoral students are future employees and the specifics and needs of their activities are similar. During the discussion, it was suggested to the doctoral students to go deeper into what level or specific language would be needed for third-cycle students and about the time and frequency of lectures.

Another question raised by doctoral students is about the appointment of scientific advisors for doctoral students. If a scientific consultant needed by the doctoral student is appointed, his work can be: unpaid, paid by the doctoral student himself or paid by redistributing the hours of the doctoral student's supervisor (for example, allocating 10 hours from the supervisor's hours to the consultant). However, the consultant may not be willing to work for free and the PhD student to pay out of his own money, and the PhD supervisor is not required to share working hours and remuneration with the consultant. It is observed that the supervisor's hours are not reduced and the consultant is paid if he is from a foreign institution, which is unfair to VMU teachers, thus also limiting the PhD student's freedom of choice. It was agreed in the Parliament that there will be a more detailed inquiry into the solution of this problem and how the payments for the activity of scientific consultants are distributed or regulated. 

The next meeting of the VDU Student Parliament - the reporting conference and the election of the president of the VDU SA will be held on March 10. We plan to hold the meeting live.