Belarusian Generation Y logbook

This year’s proposal by the Ministry of Education regarding the entrance procedure to some faculties (journalism, law, international relations and customs law) caused different reactions from applicants and their parents. Excited and uncertain for not having any information about how the interview was to be conducted, thousands of future applicants went to the appointed universities last weekend. The first round of the “professional-psychological interviews” which are to decide who can enter the University or not, were held on April 5th and 6th. Generation.by suggested Franak Viachorka, a student who was recently expelled from the Faculty of Journalism at the Belarusian State University (BSU) to attend the interview. As a potential applicant he had the opportunity to see how the people who once accepted him to University and gave him excellent grades would evaluate him now, taking into account the political background of his recent expulsion.

As it turned out, Franak was the only applicant who did not get the recommendation to apply to the faculty of journalism on that day. The committee, which included the dean and the professors who accepted Franak to the faculty 3 years ago and saw him excel as a student, decided that he is less prepared to be a journalist than any of the high school students which also came to the interview that day.

Franak was the last one to be invited to the room for the interview. In the corridor he met the vice-dean of the faculty, Volha Samusievich, who was actively involved in his expulsion a couple of moths before. They had a long and emotional argument about the way Franak was expelled and that faculty representatives distributed false information about his poor academic progress. Mrs Samusievich emphasized that she is “just an administrator and that nothing depends on her“. She reproached Franak for the stickers with his photo that had been placed on the walls of the female toilet (after Franak was expelled, students of the Faculty of Journalism had put stickers with his picture in the new building of the faculty).

Once inside the interviewing room, the panel did not ask Franak why he wanted to become a journalist. In fact, the interviewers treated him not as an applicant but as an expelled student. They told him that everyone had read his posts in his blog where he had described the way he was expelled, and that all of them got offended by it. Since he had recorded the exams where the professors had purposely failed him, the panel asked if he had not brought the recorder this time as well, and thus took away his mobile phone.

In his own words,`”the only question related to journalism that I was asked was whether I understood that my blogposts do not correspond to the social responsibility of a journalist. As a former student, I was also asked about the grounds on which editors can deny an author a publication. After I expressed my opinion, I was told that the interviewers had the impression that I was trying to press them. I was then asked to leave the room for 5 minutes and when I was back the committee announced that they could not give me the recommendation.”

The most disturbing aspect of such a committee is that they are not obliged to explain their decision on why they choose or reject to recommended students. In Franak`s case this is even more unsettling, given that he had already been accepted to the university once and had received excellent grades.

According to a majority of the applicants, “the psychological-professional interview panel” had asked the following questions:

Who is the editor of `Sovietskaja Belarus` (the state propaganda newspaper); which Belarusian printed media do you know and who are their editors; when was the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus adopted; when is the Independence Day of Belarus; who is your hero; and, naturally, why do you want to become a journalist.

In total, 1153 applicants came for the interviews to the BSU on April 5th. Of this group only 5 candidates did not get a recommendation. Franak was the only one who did not get it at the Faculty of Journalism.