Demonstrations at the University

Today I got a message on my phone from the BCA office telling me that there are demonstrations in front of the History Faculty today and that our classes have been moved to a different building. Apparently this is a fairly frequent event, and here is what I know about the situation:

In 1999 all of the leaders of education in Europe got together to talk about the university system, and they decided on a 10-year plan that would basically standardize university education among the European countries. I'm not sure what actual changes this involved, but in essence it means restructuring the schools to be more like North American universities. This change was embraced by students and faculty of the sciences, but not so much by those in the arts.

Over the past 9 years, they made little progress towards their goals for 2009, so in the last year or so the university administration has made some fairly severe and drastic changes, most of which have been contested by a number of students. Actually, recently there has been quite a bit of grafiti and propaganda around the campuses with the phrase "VAGA TOTAL CONTRA LA BOLONYA!" Bolonya is the term for the new structural organization (the place that this agreement was reached) and the propaganda calls for strikes and demonstrations and such.

The demonstration today is likely linked to the university elections that were held last week. The UB elected a new president and a number of other positions, so my best guess is that this is in some what connected to that as well.

I'll try to find a good article online that explains it all better than me and I'll post it here when I do.