Sara Huhtanen, a 24-year-old master’s student in European Studies tells us how she ended up with the Centre Students and why she thinks that the Centre Party is much more than an old men’s country club.
How long have you been involved with the Centre Students?
About a year and a half. I got involved with both the Centre Students and the Centre Youth in Helsinki in August 2013, the latter which I’m currently the chair of.
How did you end up getting involved with the Centre Party in particular? Most people probably wouldn’t consider it as the first choice for a young woman.
It was the result of a long thinking process. I’ve always lived in cities and at first I didn’t even consider the Centre because I thought I was too much of a city-girl for it. But then I started to go through different parties’ youth’s programs and realized that the Centre thought about many things like I did. On some questions the Centre is more on the left, like in taking care of the weakest in our society. But at the same time, they are really entrepreneur-oriented. Also, it was very important to me that the Centre Youth has green values and nature is close to their heart. For example, we want to make Helsinki completely coal-free.
Perhaps I also wanted to be a little rebellious. I know that I don’t agree on everything with the Centre Party itself, but the Youth is a bit different from them and, for example, we support equal marriage rights and the reformation of the transgender law. I want to be involved in changing the party from within. At some point, we Youth will become the future politicians of the Centre party. Also, the members of parliament are only a small part of the party and on many questions they are more conservative than the rest of us.
I’ve also realized that the Centre is a good party no matter what your background. For example, all of us involved in the Centre Youth in Helsinki live in the area and are involved in developing our city. Public transportation and student housing, for example, are very important to us. Personally, I really want to get rid of the juxtapositioning of Helsinki and the rest of the country.
What kind of things do you do in the Centre Students?
Now that the elections are coming we have arranged different kinds of events, like an evening in Meilahti where we invited experts to talk about the reformation of social services and health care. And then we had another event in Viikki where we talked about the challenges of food production. We also have more informal hang-outs where we meet in a bar and talk about current issues. Last year we went to see the document Presidentintekijät together and we always have a party at Vappu, too. We also arrange many events together with the Centre Youth and many of us take part in both organizations.
How would you describe the people in the Centre Party and Students?
Well, they are not all from the countryside! I think that at least half of us Students come from Helsinki or the nearby area. And no matter where we come from, we all live in Helsinki and share the same values and passion to develop the city.
Why does our university need the Centre Students?
I think that our university needs political groups in general. The more we have those, the easier it is for HYY to make a difference. When you’re involved in politics, you also get to know people, which eventually means that HYY will have contacts to those who run the country.
What works well in our university and what would you like to change?
That’s a good question! Well, for example, I learned to appreciate Unicafe after being in an exchange in Germany were they had sausage for lunch almost every day and there was never any salad or bread or things like that that we have. But Unicafe is a work in progress. I wonder if Unicafe really is the best solution. In my opinion, we should allow commercial competitors on campuses because that would also encourage Unicafe to do better.
Also, we should make things easier for international students. For example, I study in an international master’s degree program but we don’t even have all the compulsory courses provided in English! Luckily, the university just launched its new new language strategy where it says that the university will be flexibly trilingual.
One of the things that I’d also really like to change is the queuing system in Hoas (Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region) which should be made open so that people would have clear queuing numbers and they could see which areas are more popular and from where you could get an apartment more quickly.
What do you think will be the most important theme in the upcoming elections?
The most important theme will certainly be employment, but personally I hope that we would also talk about sustainable development which also has potential economic wise. Clean tech, for example, is good for both environment and employment.
Why would you encourage all students to vote?
It’s very important for students to vote. I hope that we would have a sort of revolution that all students would vote for people who are our age and who represent us so we would get younger people in the parliament. People should wake up to the fact that it is possible to change how things are. We have already campaigned for equal marriage rights and student benefits, why can’t we vote too? Then we would have people in the parliament who would make good decisions in the first place and we wouldn’t only have to settle to these ”emergency demonstrations” but instead could really make a difference.
In these series we celebrate the upcoming parliamentary elections by interviewing students involved in HYY’s political organizations about their values and political opinions. We want to encourage a multivoiced university and dialogue between different political groups by giving voice to these brave and visionary fellow-students. Different views – same university!