As of Thursday the 15th of October 2020, ISU is an official branch in Agder at UiA after the election. Elizaveta Naboka, the newly elected President and Vice-President Justin Freund talk about the organization and what it is for.
-We want to develop the organization, Elizaveta says. We want to welcome all international students.
-All international students are a automatically a member when they enroll in UiA, Justin continues. Whether they are aware of it or not.
What does it mean when your website says “contribute to national actions, amongst other things”?
-It means that every local branch work for the university, but we all work together to improve the rights on a national level.
Justin continues:
-The national ISU-board has access to a lot of political influence. They were able to get a lot of funding if students lost their jobs during covid. Right now they’re actually advocating because one of the right-wing parties pushed forward a motion in the government to have tuition reinstated for international students. So ISU is one of the organizations that have protested against that.
So how big is ISU’s reach?
-UiA was the last university in Norway that didn’t have ISU, so now that we have that we can coordinate with other universities. It does also have a national political status, so it allows us to do more than just a student group, Justin says. So I definitely think it’s cool and important that we exist. UiA has a good amount of work to do, and it’s something we’ve known for a while. Our end goal is to have equal opportunities and equal rights.
Elizaveta mentions that international students also contact ISU before coming to Norway to ask different questions. ISU is a union that is there to help international students in any way.
She mentions in the end that their main goal is to improve the students’ environment at the university.
