President Yushchenko addresses students, rectors during Lviv visit (02/20/05)

President Yushchenko addresses students, rectors during Lviv visit

by Volodymyr Khitsyak

LVIV - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko flew to Lviv on February 16, making his first visit there as president. He greeted thousands of students gathered in front of Lviv National University (LNU) and then gave awards to rectors and other distinguished residents of Lviv at a meeting inside the university.

Also that day, he presented Petro Oliinyk as the new chairman of the Lviv Oblast at the Lviv Oblast Administration building and stopped at St. George's Hill for a moment of prayer and to speak with Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Cardinal Lubomyr Husar.

Thousands of students from Lviv had traveled to Kyiv in November and December 2004 to support Mr. Yushchenko on Independence Square during the Orange Revolution, so the president's greeting to them in front of the university was an appropriate stopover. Due to inclement weather, the president's plane arrived in Lviv more than two hours late, and so the whole schedule for his visit was set back. Nevertheless, the students waited to see him, chanting his name.

Inside LNU's Hall of Mirrors, President Yushchenko met with rectors and students of Lviv's academic community. He said that he wanted to hear serious proposals for the government in these surroundings.

The assembled educators repeatedly underscored the necessity of modernizing higher education in Ukraine. As an example of the flaws in Ukraine's current educational model, Prof. Ivan Vakarchuk, rector of LNU, mentioned that the state's Higher Commission for Attestation does not recognize the degree of the Rev. Borys Gudziak, rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), who has a doctorate in history from Harvard.

The Rev. Gudziak himself brought up the fact that the degrees in theology awarded by the UCU are not recognized by Ukraine's government. He gave the president a concrete example of a student affected by this policy: Andriy Andrushkiv, a third-year student of theology at the UCU who was present at the meeting.

"Andriy Andrushkiv put himself in front of an automobile so that a representative of the local administration [in the Odesa region] would not take a ballot box from the polling place," explained the Rev. Gudziak. Mr. Andrushkiv served as an observer in the Odesa region for the November 21, 2004, election and the government official in question was not allowed by law to even touch the ballot box, let alone take it anywhere.

Because theology is not recognized by the Ukrainian government, noted the Rev. Gudziak, Mr. Andrushkiv does not have any of the modest government benefits allowed other students in Ukraine, like paying a reduced student rate on public transport.

Breaking protocol, President Yushchenko rose from his seat, walked up to Mr. Andrushkiv, and embracing him said: "I am impressed!" The president then told the students present that his personnel policy is to assemble a young staff, and he called upon graduates to actively apply for government positions.

Among the ideas suggested was a proposal by Prof. Vakarchuk that LNU, the National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the UCU be granted academic autonomy so that they can create their own programs. "This is not a novelty for universities globally," noted the Rev. Gudziak later, "but in Ukraine too much has been controlled centrally by the ministry [of education] and it is time to break out of this mold."

At the end of the meeting, the president presented awards for service to distinguished people of Lviv, including Prof. Vakarchuk, the Rev. Gudziak and Mykola Horyn, former chairman of the Lviv Oblast.

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