Since the middle of the seventeenth century October 15 has been a special day for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. This year birthday was celebrated with devotion to the 1658 Treaty of Hadiach, which officially gave the academy the prerogatives and rights of an institution of higher education, Ukraine’s oldest.
The celebration was combined with introducing new members of the Board of Trustees, the Ukraina bank and Kyiv City Administration. The new public trustees are not simply the school’s patrons but are also supposed to participate in its administrative management. There were speeches both about the achievements and problems of the alma mater of Ukrainian students at the ceremony.
The student part of the ceremony was full of freedom: ranging from washing the statue of Kyiv-Mohyla philosopher Hryhory Skovoroda (in the photo) as a symbolic confirmation of purity ideals to a seminarians’ carnival with Cossacks dishes – beer and gruel – sold for a symbolic 1 Briukh (named for University President Vyacheslav Briukhovetsky) equaling one hryvnia. The burlesque merry-making of the young in no way harmed the serious concerts and performances by student troupes. Thus, the respected academic traditions of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy are counterbalanced by the search for new forms of expression.
